Museumsbesøget: En undersøgelse af brug, udbytte og oplevet værdi

The aim of this dissertation is to understand the value and significance of museums to their visitors – not in terms of institutional goals or measurements of societal impact, but through the visitors’ own experience and use. Although museums are often highlighted as important to both society and individuals, we lack knowledge of how they are actually experienced by the visitor and the value they attach to the visit. To this end, extensive empirical material has been collected through interviews and surveys. Methodologically, I have developed analytical approaches within a framework of hermeneutics and historical consciousness, using the concepts of life-space and life-understanding. The life-space captures the visitor’s present world, divided into a near and a distant we, while life-understanding highlights how memories and experiences are brought into play at the encounter with the museum. Together, these approaches make it possible to see the museum visit as part of the visitor’s life-world.
Moreover, I have applied methods which compares motivation before the visit with the subsequent use, showing how social and reflective outcomes are tied to museum spaces and objects. While much museological research has framed museums as places of learning or social change, this dissertation, through a Uses & Gratifications perspective, shows how visitors actively seek to fulfill needs through museum use. These needs concern not only learning, but also enjoyment, togetherness, and reflection.
The results demonstrate that museum visits rarely serve a single purpose. They are used for social interaction, enjoyment, learning, and reflection often simultaneously and in interplay. Motivation plays a role, but value also develops during and especially after the visit, when experiences are processed and woven into new contexts. Objects and spaces act as catalysts for conversations, memories, and insights. The analysis suggests that value must be understood as emergent: arising unpredictably in the meeting of experiences, social relations, museum content, and surroundings. This is especially evident in the near we, i.e. among family and friends, where learning, reflection, and enjoyment unfold.
On this basis, it is recommended that museums and researchers adopt a user-centered and emergence-based framework. Methodologically, this implies developing studies that capture both motivation and subsequent use and analyzing how objects and spaces are socially and reflectively activated. For museum practice, the results suggest strengthening the museum as a multifunctional and dialogical space, where the social and relational – particularly the near we – is strategically integrated. Understanding value as emergent provides museums with a more realistic view of their significance for individuals and can support both audience work and strategic development.