Radically revolutionary or pretty flowers? The impact of curatorial narrative of artistic deviance on perceived artist influence.

The importance of curatorial narrative—the embedding of artworks or an entire exhibition inside a wider context of meaning and significance—is clear in theory but has not been empirically investigated. We do not actually know if curatorial decisions, even something as simple as changing the order or the types of other artworks with which a painting is exhibited, actually impact how art and artists are perceived. Do viewers respond to temporal or contextual narratives when moving through an exhibition? We address this question by building on a recent lab-based social psychology study that suggested that viewers judged the artist as more influential (in terms of famousness, influence on contemporaries, and contribution to art) when target artworks were presented among others meant to highlight the artists’ “deviance” in terms of style. We adapt this paradigm to a quasi-experimental study conducted in the Albertina Museum in Vienna (N = 216). We used an impressionist artwork of waterlilies by Monet, placed within both a temporary exhibition—meant to highlight his revolutionary anticipation of abstraction—and within a permanent exhibition of other impressionistic pieces not highlighting deviance. Results showed that the artist was indeed considered more influential in the temporary exhibition. These findings provide quantification for how curatorial narratives can change whether and when artists are considered influential, beyond the level of didactic extraexhibit information, and offer guidelines for evidence-based curatorial practice.