The evaluation of the museum experience is no longer limited to simply measuring visitor numbers or observing visitor flows. Today, cultural institutions are exploring more nuanced and sensitive approaches to understand how audiences actually experience their visit, interact with artworks, and construct meaning throughout their journey. This presentation of the study proposes to address two complementary dimensions: the impact of sound environments on the visitor experience, and new large-scale audience research methodologies.
Immersive devices, particularly sound-based tours, reflect a growing trend in cultural and tourist venues. They rely on sound compositions and spatialized narratives to enhance the visitor’s sensory and cognitive experience. At the Musée national de la Marine, for example, research projects conducted in collaboration with university laboratories have made it possible to experiment with and analyze the effects of sound-based mediation within a visitor itinerary. Discover how this type of approach opens up new perspectives for measuring not only attention to the exhibition, but also the emotions, engagement, and memory retention generated by the experience itself.
At the same time, audience knowledge is now being structured around large-scale research projects capable of going beyond the simple collection of demographic data. The European Sentomus study represents one of the first coordinated efforts to explore in depth the behavior, expectations, and perceptions of visitors in partner museums across several countries. Unlike traditional surveys limited to a single site, this project makes it possible to understand how audiences perceive the museum offer, assess exhibitions and activities, and the value they attribute to their visit, thus providing institutions with benchmarking tools, avenues for strategic improvement, and a better understanding of their social role. Discover how these approaches help to rethink the ways in which the most essential dimensions of the visit can be made visible, for the benefit of both audiences and institutions.
