Taline Kuyumjian

Leisure & Practice: an Exploratory Study on the Impact of Leisurely Museum Visits on Museum Professionals Taline Kuyumjian

On any given day a museum functions as a tourist destination, offers a place to leisurely enjoy the day, provides educational resources and serves as a community hub. Yet a museum can also be a very overwhelming space for many visitors. Existing research has documented the nature of the museum experience for a wide range of visitors, but there is very little research that has focused on museum staff as visitors. This book seeks to better understand how museum practitioners visit museums, how these visits are impacted by their work and how their work is in turn impacted by their leisurely visits. The findings shared in this work are intended to start conversations about how professionals conceive the museum experience and the assumptions they bring to it based on their personal museum-going experiences.