CAPTURING MUSEUM EXPERIENCE WITH EMOTIONAL TRANSFER THEORY

Abstract

In contemporary museology, visitor relations have becomeincreasingly important. This has led museums to adopt a visitororiented approach. Although many aspects of visitor experiencesare investigated in the literature, it is observed that emotionalexperiences are not explained in a comprehensive way. This studyaims to discover the emotions that the artefacts in museumslocated in Eskisehir, Turkey arouse at the visitors. Initially, themuseum websites were scanned and information about museumswas obtained. Then, nine museums, which included artefacts intheir collection that can transfer emotions with a specific theme,were chosen. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with127 participants who visited the chosen museums. The interviewsevaluated the participants’ emotional status based on L. N.Tolstoy’s Theory of Emotional Transference. The themes of antimimicry, romanticism, expressionism, transference intensity andthe emotions’ nature are derived from this theory. The overallfinding is that museums can provide emotional transference apartfrom anti-mimicry and religious feelings. In addition, the resultsare important in terms of demonstrating the effect of the museumthemes and the emotional statements of the artefacts on visitors.