In addition to the attention to sequences of actions and Pragmatic goals, the Pragmatic interpretation tends to emphasize learning "facts," "knowing that x is the case in world" (as above, when the girl says that she was "Happy to know what African music sounded like". This excerpt also illustrates the visual bias of the pragmatic visitor, as the girl begins her description with "seeing" and ends with "looked at", despite the fact that the exhibit was titled "Music of the World" and the emphasis was on the auditory‹on music as a universal language.

The map element named "Snowflacks" refers to the snowflake-making exhibit mentioned in the interview excerpt discussed above. The picture marked "Elfant" refers to the Mowdah display (no. 3 on floor plan). Interview Excerpt 3 is the girl's description of this experience:

I: Okay, Heather, can you tell me what is the first thing on your map that you remember seeing in the gallery?
S: Um...the elephant.
I: You remember the elephant first?
S: Yeah
I: Tell me about the elephant.
S: It was really big, and it was just the head of it, and then you could go upstairs and pretend you were having a ride on the elephant around the world.
I: And what were your experiences there, when you were looking at the elephant?
S: Um...
I: What did you see?
S: I saw that it was big and it was colorful, and it had a hat-type thing on.
I: And how did that make you feel?
S: Like kind of happy or surprised.
I: Did it remind you of something?
S: Once we went to, like, I think it was Busch Gardens, and I rode on an elephant, and it reminded me of that a lot.

This excerpt illustrates how, in addition to emphasizing sequences of actions, pragmatic visitors focus on the details of the exhibits ("big", "colorful", "hat-type thing on") and compare present perceptions with past experiences (Busch Gardens elephant ride). Notice too how there are few references to introspection, and other people, when mentioned, tend to be cardboard characters introduced primarily for their role in carrying on the narrative action; (this subject was visiting the gallery with her sister and both parents). Organizers remain close to a denotative description of the gallery, avoiding layers of connotative associations.

It was noted above that Pragmatic visitors tend to be inner-directed (in Lowen's terminology, "introverted"), as are Diversionary visitors. These two groups are in contrast to the outer-directed ("extroverted") Critical and Utopian visitors. This characteristic would appear to account at least in part for the fact that the Pragmatic and Diversionary visitors on average stopped at far fewer exhibits in the Passport gallery than did the other two groups. Pragmatic visitors stopped at an average of 16 displays, Diversionary visitors at 17, Utopian visitors 22 and Critical visitors 28. Introverted visitors tend to be less concerned with adapting themselves to the external context of the gallery‹the messages that curators want them to absorb and the codes of viewing that they are expected to use. Unless in response to the desires of their companions (see the example provided below), needs-oriented Pragmatic and Diversionary visitors stop only at those exhibits that really interest them rather than dutifully putting time in on other, less interesting exhibits in order to understand what the gallery designers meant them to understand.

One might expect that this inner-directedness would also result in a less systematic pattern of moving through the gallery. However, the pattern of moving through the gallery is also influenced by whether the visitor tends to have a systematic style of cognitive processing. Pragmatic visitors, as noted above, dislike ambiguity and prefer to approach new situations with orderly, ready-made routines. In this respect, they are quite unlike Diversionary visitors (see below), and this shows up in their movement patterns. While 50% of Pragmatic visitors moved through the gallery in what was called a "crawling" pattern‹a steady, systematic, movement from beginning to end‹, only 23% of Diversionary visitors did so (see Table 1). The "leaping" pattern, characterized by a more erratic jumping back and forth between displays in different parts of the gallery, was found to apply to 25% of Pragmatic visitors, and 77% of Diversionary visitors. Veron and Levasseur (1989) describe the "swimming" pattern as one where the visitor flows through the center of the gallery space with almost no stops and note that it is an expression of a visitor's refusal to negotiate the intended meanings of the gallery. This pattern, which can be considered a rather systematic, if negative, approach to the gallery experience, was found in 25% of the Pragmatic visitors, and none of the Diversionary.

 Table 1:  Movement Patterns of Different Groups of Visitors

	Pragmatic	Critical	Utopian	Diversionary
Crawling	50%	71%	56%	23%
Leaping	25%	14%	44%	77%
Swimming	25%	14%	0	0

 

(2) Critical Reception Strategy

 The visitor relying predominantly on a Critical Reception Strategy (17% of subjects, ranging in age from 10 to 49) favors the acquisition of ideas, which are valued for their form or place in an abstract order, whether or not this proves "useful" in any concrete way. The visit is evaluated in terms of non-existential values as well, as a principle of organization or abstraction rather than as a tool. For this form-, collection- and classification-oriented group, visits tend be long and thorough in comparison with those employing other strategies. The metaphor of the gallery as a museum evokes the interpretations of those employing this strategy. The optimal experience for this group is the production of new models of the world, either in terms of form or content.

From the perspective of a figural analysis of this interpretive strategy (see Figure 3), the preferred image of the message sender is that of a professional lecturer. The preferred image of the message receiver (constructed receiver) is that of expert. The preferred figure of enunciation is pedagogical. The preferred figure of the constructed world is that of a reality to be understood or modeled. The preferred figure of modalization is that of someone who organizes and focalizes information about the world. The preferred figure of implication is that of evaluation. The preferred figure of expression is that of professional communicator. The preferred figure of perception is that of active organizer of information. The preferred figures of representation are the direct statement of rules or collections that exhibit a logical system of classification.

Looked at from a cognitive processing model, Critical visitors resemble what Lowen calls Analysts. Analysts (Critical visitors) need to see structure in what is presented to them. They assume the world is coherent and have an urge to understand that coherence. They are driven to see everything as part of a conceptual structure. They use logic to process what they take in. They like to find solutions to a problem, and are able to handle complexity well, trying to make very complex matters simpler. Critical visitors think with words, and like to consider things one at a time in order, sequentially. They are gregarious, and like to be in touch with people, but tend to treat people as objects (or rather, tokens of types in a logical structure). Analysts are not very aware of their own body and somewhat insensitive to sensations. Critical visitors may be seen by others as complex and out of touch with realities and normal necessities. They are intellectual, and their primary mode of operating is through the logical sorting of tokens into types. Like Pragmatic visitors, they pay close attention to detail, and they are interested in abstract things rather than concrete ones. Unlike Pragmatic visitors, however, their locus of control comes from outside themselves‹from a supposed external "order of things" or from others, in this case museum curators. Hence, these visitors are quite intent on discovering the overall order or logic of the gallery and of individual displays, that is in learning the knowledge structures intended to be communicated by the curatorial staff.

Critical visitors are quite systematic in their exploration of the gallery, slowly and methodically moving from display to display in the general order of visit envisaged by museum staff. Thus, from a study of their tracking sheet, these visitors were most like those labeled as "ants" in a study of visitor behavior in a French museum (Veron and Levasseur 1989) and 71% were classified as "crawling" (as opposed to "leaping" or "swimming") through the gallery (see Table 1). Critical visitors also stopped more frequently than did any of the other groups (at an average of 28 displays), as noted above.

Critical visitors tend to focus on the structure and logic of the exhibits, as exemplified in the following interview excerpt (no. 4), where a 21-year-old Critical man talks about his experiences first at the Drum display (no. 35 in Figure 1) and then at the Music of the World displays (42-43 in Figure 1):
 

I: Um. Can, okay, here's a question. What's the most interesting thing you saw in the gallery?
S: Let's see. I think probably the uh the musical instruments. I, I always like that. I have a musical background, I used to play in the band. I played trumpet, saxophone, and other things like that. And that, that stood out. Steel drums from Trinidad and Tobago.
I: Uh-huh.
S: And then there was a little display on instruments that are indigenous to various continents, like, they had a sitar from India and other instruments that are native to Asia, that part of the world. And then they had another display of instruments from Africa. I believe they had some drums, those are, those are very common there.
I: Did any of those remind you of anything in your own life? Or, did you have any feeling about those?
S: Well, I've had brushes with them. I can remember some friends who went over to Africa several years ago.
I: Mm-hmm.
S: And they brought some of these things back, and I guess that's what it reminds me of most, is some of the artifacts that they had brought back.

This Critical visitor highlights the classification of musical instruments according to their geographical origin. His use of expressions such as "indigenous to" "native to," "common to", "display" and "artefacts" demonstrates his tendency to interpret parts of displays as tokens of types, that is to go from the specific to the general. While an optimal experience for even these visitors, like others, requires that there be a personal meaning associated with the cultural "facts" of a display (e.g., this subject's tying together his childhood musical experiences with the drum display), this "personal" aspect seems to be on a far more abstract, and less emotional level for critical visitors than for the other three types. Note, in excerpt 4, that there is no mention made of the action sequences of visiting either of the two musical displays described‹something which a Pragmatic visitor might be expected to highlight. While this subject was visiting the gallery alone (something done by only two of the visitors in this study, both of which were male and Critical), and thus makes no mention of a companion's reactions to displays, other critical visitors with companions also do not feature them in their descriptions, as do especially Utopian and Diversionary visitors (see below).

Figure 6: Map of the Passport Gallery drawn by a 21-year-old critical man

A look at the map drawn by this Critical visitor (Figure 5) provides further examples of the kind of interpretive lens he was using. His map features five of the 33 displays he stopped at, which he labels "Ritual Display, Carnival, Korean Wedding, etc." (= the Tap-Tap Truck, no. 9 on the floor plan); "Mexican Display of Death" (= Day of the Dead, no. 5), "Doll Display" (= Kachina, no 11); "Steel Drums" (= Drums, no. 35); and the bipartite "Asian & African Musical Instruments" (= Music, no. 42) and "European & American Instruments" (= Music, no. 43). With the exception of the Drums, which, given the subject's background and interest in music, had a strong appeal to him, elements that these displays have which are appealing to Critical visitors include:

    1) Cases with collections of artefacts (dolls, figurines, musical instruments, things used in rituals), where each particular artefact has meaning only as a token of a type, a variation on the theme or rule of the collection it is a part of as opposed to a display where an object is presented alone, to emphasize its uniqueness and hence its inherent value).
    2) A contract of reception which invites the visitor to analyze the whole into its parts and put them together again. For example, the Tap-Tap truck ("Ritual Display" on the map) invites the visitor to break down rituals into the kinds of smells, colors, foods, and so forth used in them. This kind of analytical exercise is prized by Critical visitors, as is the attention to detail that it encourages.

These interests and tendencies are also seen in the following excerpt from the interview with this Critical visitor, where he discusses the display "Where Do You Stand?" (no. 23 on the floor plan), an exhibit about cultural differences in proxemic behavior:
 

 I: What do you think would be / is the most important thing that you learned today?
S: Probably a little more insight on some of the various um differences in cultures, you know, like from country to country, and from continent to continent. Uh...One of the things I was aware of but I didn't have any specific information about was um in the various countries, the distance between two people when they're discussing things. You know, like when they're having a conversation. Northern Europeans tend to stand back a long way.
I: Mm-hmm.
S: They tend to stand back about five feet, I think is what the display had said. Um...The closest people will stand would be about a foot from one another. That would be in the Arabian peninsula and Arab countries. Um...And other nations would have something in the middle, like Latin American countries, they tend to stand back a couple of feet. And, and up here, in the Americas as well, like I mean like the distance between you and me is probably a little more than a foot, maybe two feet.
I: Yeah, yeah.
S: Something like that, it's customary. And you know there are obviously variations in between that.

Note how this visitor carefully outlines the structure of the proxemic system. He begins and ends with an identification of the system of rules of cultural differences ("differences in cultures") and customs ("it's customary"). He defines the units that make up "cultures" (countries and continents). Next, he specifies which class of rules about cultural differences the display dealt with ("distance between two people when they're discussing things"), following this with examples of these differences, arranged in systematic order from maximum to minimum distance, with examples classified according to geographical location, quantified distances, and location of the example within the system (maximum, "in the middle", and minimum distance). Each part is related to the whole of the system, although this visitor was uncomfortable with how to classify North American proxemic behavior and settles for the solution that North Americans are, like Latin Americans, "something in the middle". Note how this system is orderly and convenient in that every culture has its proper place, at some distance from the maximum and minimum. This excerpt shows how critical visitors like to find solutions to a problem, and are able to handle complexity well, usually by making very complex matters simpler.

Excerpt 5 also shows how Critical visitors tend to think with words, and like to consider things one at a time, sequentially. Note also how the visitor's mention of the interviewer is tied to providing an example of how the interaction between the two is a token of a type of interaction described by the proxemic system. Critical visitors, as noted above, tend to treat people as things. The sentences Critical users employ are often those which specify a rule or law, as in the case of most of the sentences in Excerpt 5 above.

As noted above, Critical visitors tend to think with words and their maps, like the one in Figure 5, tend to be full of verbal labels, many of which emphasize the conceptual structure of the display in question. In Figure 5, for example, the Tap-Tap truck is labeled "Ritual Display," with elements of ritual listed below that tag ("Carnival", "Korean wedding"). Three of the five displays shown on the map feature geographical labels ("Asian and African Musical Instruments", "European and American Instruments", "Korean Wedding", and "Mexican Display of Death").

Critical visitors rely heavily on words, and are, along with Utopian visitors, among the most avid readers of the verbal labels provided by curators (consider, for example, the reference to the plaque in Excerpt 5). Their maps rely more heavily on words than pictures, as is exemplified by the map in Figure 7, drawn by another Critical visitor, a 49-year-old man.

Figure 7:  Map of the Passport Gallery drawn by a 49-year-old critical man

Figure 7 also illustrates how many Critical visitors take great pains to draw a map of the gallery which both provides a remarkably thorough verbal inventory of the displays (their attention to detail as opposed to context) and the spatial relationship or structure that exists between these displays (their attention to structure and sequence). The external orientation of Critical visitors also leads them to focus almost as much on displays which they were not particularly interested in as in those parts of the whole which gave them the most rewarding or interesting experiences.

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