How Long Do People Spend Looking at Paintings?

About 16 years ago, two scientists described a paradox they had noticed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lisa S. Smith and Jeffrey K. Smith – now both professors at the University of Otago – studied what experience visitors take away from a museum. They wanted to know what museum visitors think about their walks through institutions with white walls. It turned out that visitors say they adore museums. They described their experiences as "amazing," "incredible," "breathtaking" and "unforgettable."

But they noticed something else too. People look at art for a very short time. So, in a 2001 study, they raised the question: "How can people be moved by a work of art they viewed for such a brief moment?"

Searching for an answer to this question, they raised another one: How long do people walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art spend looking at works of art? Together with a volunteer, the pair of scientists observed 150 people examining 6 paintings from the museum's collection. Among them was the famous Paul Cezanne painting "The Card Players." They found that, on average, viewers spent 27.2 seconds in front of a painting, with the shortest time being 17 seconds and the longest 3 minutes and 48 seconds – that is how long one person looked at Rembrandt's "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer" (1653). So, back when there were no iPhones and our attention was less distracted by electronic devices, the Smiths concluded that: "a museum visit is not a long stare at a few works of art, but rather a survey of many works of art."

The question of how long people look at paintings in a museum is still interesting today. Especially to the Smiths. In February 2016, the pair published another, larger study in which they observed more people and more paintings. The results were similar to the 2001 study: the average time was 28.63 seconds, with a median of 21 seconds.

The results suggest that the amount of time spent in front of paintings has not changed because of mobile phones. However, another interesting thing was noticed – selfies with paintings. Although the researchers had not planned to record this, the phenomenon was noticed on the very first day of the study. Of the 365 visitors observed, 35% took selfies, and one couple was excluded from the study because they took so many selfies that they stopped looking at the paintings themselves.

In 2017, a study titled "Art Perception in the Museum: How We Spend Time and Experience Space in Art Exhibitions" was published. Scientist Claus-Christian Carbon observed how long people look at paintings in smaller exhibition spaces where photography is prohibited. After all, a large share of the Metropolitan's visitors are visitors to the city who want to see the most famous works before flying home or moving on to other tourist activities.

Carbon, a professor of psychology at Bamberg, says that "People switch into Metropolitan mode – they want to see a lot."

His study focused on six paintings by Gerhard Richter in a temporary exhibition dedicated to the artist, which featured 28 works in total. Unlike the 2001 study, this one looked at whether visitors returned to a painting they had already viewed. The distance between the viewer and the painting was also measured.

Viewers spent an average of 25.4 seconds in front of Richter's paintings, which is considerably more than the Smiths found. Interestingly, 51% of viewers returned to a painting a second time, but their first look was 12 seconds shorter than that of those who looked only once.

The distance study suggests that viewers choose their distance depending on the size of the painting.

Of course, there is no "correct" answer to how long one should look at a painting. Sometimes you can look at a single painting for three hours, and sometimes a quick glance is enough if you are visiting a large museum. The Smiths noted that people sit through several hours watching an opera, but if we divided that time among all the exhibits in a museum, a single painting in a large retrospective exhibition would get only a few seconds.

So, if you stand in front of a single painting in a museum for longer than a minute, you can give yourself a pat on the back.

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