Museum Management and Curatorship, Vol.19,No.1,pp.63–73,2001  2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Pergamon Printed in Great Britain 0260–4779/01 $ - see front matter PII:S0260–4779(00)00043-1 An Empirical Study of the Effects of the Design of the Display Galleries of an Art Gallery on the Movement of Visitors Laurent Bourdeau and Jean-Charles Chebat Overview During thisexploratory research, undertaken ata Canadian artgallery,the present authors studied the relationship between the movement of visitors and the effects attributable to the design of its display galleries. These data were gathered from a sample of 60 visitors to this art gallery when exhibiting contem- porary abstract works of art. Two experimental situations were created whereby the flow of traffic was reversed for one half of the sample. The analysis of these data was undertaken from qualitative observations made by the researchers and from the sketches made then on a plan of the art gallery of the pathways fol- lowed by the subjects. The results tend to show that the design of the physical environment, and its architectural characteristics, have a significant influence on the movement of visitors. Introduction People exploit different physical characteristics of the environment to maintain their orientation as they move about in a city (Auge ´, 1986),using particular buildings as landmarks (Lynch, 1960) and memorizing the distinctive character- istics ofthe environment to orient themselves. Indeed,people are able easily to recall their complex physical and urban environment because they habitually move along the same paths (cf. Lynch, 1960). When they move through a smalle environment, such as the interior of a museum, people also make use of the physicalcharacteristics of the environment. These physical characteristics play two roles.First,they become landmarks which allow the individual to prepare a cognitive representation of his physical environment (Evans et al., 1981). This cognitive mapping is, in fact,the capacity of a person to look across a space and determine the path he will follow (Weisman, 1983).In this way,a visitor will utilize the physical characteristics of a display gallery in order to orient himself and to move about purposefully within his environment. Second,they become landmarks which augment a person’s interest in the environment itself. In the case of a museum or art gallery, the physical characteristics of the display galleries can augment the visitor’s interest in the works of art.