9. May 2024: Art in Urban Spaces: Assessing the Psychological and Societal Effects of two Public Art Exhibitions in Berlin, IAEA (Mallorca, Spain, 8-10 May 2024); presenter: Corinna Kühnapfel

Art that is publicly displayed has the potential to captivate us. It offers opportunities to emotionally connect, reflect, and possibly alter our perspectives. This can apply to outdoor sculptures and murals, but also to art showcased in public street-level galleries. In two free, street-level contemporary exhibitions at Gallery Wedding (Berlin), curated by Solvej Ovesen, we engaged pedestrians with the exhibitions and assessed mood, values, and attitudes before and after the experience.

The first exhibition, “The Mine Gives, the Mine Takes” by Ana Alenso highlighted the link between Venezuela's socio-economic crisis and unregulated gold mining, aiming to raise awareness about the impacts of metal purchases. We found that this exhibition influenced visitors (N = 50) by increasing their awareness of nature while diminishing their mood and hedonic values.

The second exhibition, "Job Center. Psychic Places" by Emily Hunt, focused on community engagement and perceptions of local relationships in the neighborhood the gallery is situated in. Participants (N = 64) reported a heightened sense of neighborhood connection and improved subjective wellbeing after interacting with the exhibit.

Furthermore, in these studies, we included approaches taking into consideration the perspective of the artists and curator by interviewing them about their aims to instill emotional engagement in the viewers. Preliminary results show that in both studies, the extent to which feeling the emotions the artist intended to evoke in the viewer, yet not those of the curator, as well as subjective aesthetic evaluation of each exhibition (as good, interesting, etc.), predicted changes in the variables we measured pre- and post-exposure.
We discuss our findings regarding insights into the impacts of brief art engagements in urban and accessible everyday settings on the transformative potential of art concerning our moods, well-being, the attitudes we hold, the cognitive processing enabled in art settings, and potential behavioral changes.