Relational Aesthetics in Art Museum Education: Engendering Visitors’ Narratives through Participatory Acts for Interpretive Experience

This article explores how to ensure visitor engagement with art objects at exhibition spaces in art museums through relational aesthetics, which focuses on the intersubjective relationship that art objects arouse in visitors. In the 1990s, Bourriaud coined the term relational aesthetics in reference to interactive installation art, but the concept has yet to be actively examined in terms of visitor engagement. In this context, this study examines the theoretical framework of relational aesthetics in terms of its implications for art museum education. As a result, this article explains how constructing relational aesthetics depends on intervening in visitors’ experiences with art objects through participatory acts to build individual visitors’ creative agency as well as intersubjectivity between visitors and objects in the in-between space.