Is There More to A Visual Art Exhibition than just Art?

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the critical success factors for a visual art exhibition—specifically, a national arts festival. A structured questionnaire served as the instrument for collecting data. The questionnaire was distributed by trained fieldworkers at three venues that served as visual art exhibition galleries at the Aardklop National Arts Festival. Convenience sampling was used to gather 305 questionnaires from the three venues used as art exhibition galleries. The statistical analysis was done in two stages. The first stage included a two-way frequency table in order to determine the profile of respondents at these visual art exhibitions. In the second stage, a principal axis factor analysis was used to determine the five critical success factors identified in this research: venue and accessibility, catering, marketing, exhibition and display aspects, and health and safety. It was the first time that this type of research was implemented at a visual art exhibition at an art festival. Therefore, this research contributes significantly to the literature, specifically by creating a memorable visitor experience at a visual art exhibition with regard to important critical success factors. Keywords: