This article reports on research to identify the conditions required to enhance novices' percipience of works of art in galleries. The first section relates empirical and philosophical aesthetics to cognitive and cultural processes to determine the theoretical basis of how knowledgeability of works of art is attained. A twofold approach for enhancing novices' percipience of works of art is established: first, novices require knowledge of causal explanations related to the context in which the art is made; second, novices have to use appropriate knowledge-seeking strategies for interpreting the art. The second section describes the effect of interventions, structured around the twofold approach outlined above, to enable a group of eight-to-eleven-year-old novices of mixed gender and ability to achieve percipience of a work of art.
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