Art Works at Work: The Impact of Workplace Art

Resource Summary

This paper explores the impact that employees and board members of an organization believe the art in their workplace has on their experience at work and identifies the exhibition’s features salient to their experience of the art. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 19 affiliates of an Australian organization with an institutional art collection. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis by two researchers, with a final inter-rater reliability of 0.96. The results showed that respondents believe there are five main ways they are impacted by the art in their workplace: the art promotes social interactions, elicits emotional responses, facilitates personal connection-making, generally enhances the workplace environment and fosters learning. Participants indicated the salient features of the collection are its changing nature, creativity, diversity, quality and connection to the organization’s mission. The findings suggest that there may be a number of positive impacts on employees and other affiliates when art is present in the workplace, including interpersonal learning and mission-related content learning. The findings suggest that art connected to the organization’s mission, rotating exhibitions and diverse collections are valued by workplace viewers. The study highlights the importance of the aesthetic environment in the workplace and is one of the first to examine artworks in the work setting.