Multivocal Exhibition: Exploring Cultural Perspectives through User-Curated Art Exhibitions

Recently, cultural institutions have seen a rise in citizen curation projects, where people actively engage in curating and interpreting cultural artifacts. Citizen curation involves using collective knowledge and shared interests to create rich narratives around heritage items. This approach values the diverse perspectives individuals bring to preserving and representing culture. In this work, we investigate the potential of citizen curation applied to the subjective and culturally bound topic of symbolism. To do so, we present a pilot study on the development and user testing of the Multivocal Exhibition application. This application allows users to curate their art exhibitions by picking one theme and three cultural contexts that spark their interest. The app then selects artworks and symbolic data from HyperReal (cultural symbolism knowledge graph), Wikidata, and the National Museum of World Cultures (NMVW) to create a 3D environment featuring three artworks that symbolically convey the chosen theme from the perspective of the selected cultural contexts. The purpose of this app is to foster an open dialogue about the uniqueness and similarities of cultures, and promote inclusivity and cultural awareness, by showing how artifacts and what they depict can be interpreted in different cultural contexts, according to their symbology. Multivocal exhibition was tested by 12 users divided into 6 groups. The evaluation is based on the interaction between the users and the application, the analysis of the dialogues that were prompted utilizing the app, and an interview after trying two scenarios. Our results show how serendipity and surprise emerge as central themes in the cross-cultural experiences of the users. These elements play an indispensable role in cultivating engagement through symbolism, enriching users’ comprehension of diverse cultures, and heightening overall engagement. Moreover, the cognitive gap intentionally created by the app —triggering questions about why specific symbols convey particular meanings within certain contexts— proves to be a potent stimulus for user curiosity and engagement. We report additional findings, lessons learned and future work at the end of the paper.