'Escaping to the gallery': understanding the motivations of visitors to galleries

Whilst market research and academic studies by sociologists have identified the personal
and socio-culturalfactors that influence visits to galleries, there has been less attention to
the area of motivational research. Understanding motivations is important as it reveals
the underlying reasons why visitors choose to participate in specific leisure activities. This
paper focuses on the motivations of two groups of visitors at events at an art gallery. A pretested
motivational scale built around three factors, learning, social/family interaction and Escapism, explained 71.5% of variance. Escapism explained 29.4% of that variance and was the core motivation. The findings ofthe research are important to both academics and practitioners as previously learning was thought to be the main motivation. This
study should be replicated in other settings to evaluate whether gallery and museum managers need to re-consider the purpose, content and marketing of their programmes in
a post-modern society.