Capturing Museum Experience with Emotional Transfer Theory

In contemporary museology, visitor relations have become increasingly important. This has led museums to adopt a visitor-oriented approach. Although many aspects of visitor experiences are investigated in the literature, it is observed that emotional experiences are not explained in a comprehensive way. This study aims to discover the emotions that the artefacts in museums located in Eskisehir, Turkey arouse at the visitors. Initially, the museum websites were scanned and information about museums was obtained. Then, nine museums, which included artefacts in their collection that can transfer emotions with a specific theme, were chosen. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 127 participants who visited the chosen museums. The interviews evaluated the participants’ emotional status based on L. N. Tolstoy’s Theory of Emotional Transference. The themes of anti-mimicry, romanticism, expressionism, transference intensity and the emotions’ nature are derived from this theory. The overall finding is that museums can provide emotional transference apart from anti-mimicry and religious feelings. In addition, the results are important in terms of demonstrating the effect of the museum themes and the emotional statements of the artefacts on visitors.