Negotiating empathy in the art museum: ekphrastic inquiry as a historiographic tool

This article is positioned at the intersection of literary studies and museum studies. It investigates the potential of Ekphrastic Inquiry in art museums as a form of visitor engagement that can facilitate a simultaneous sense of empathetic connection with people and events from the past, with a heightened awareness that such connection must always be perceived through our experience in the present. Ekphrastic Inquiry presents multiple ekphrastic texts alongside existing curatorial labels, with an invitation for museum visitors to respond by composing their own ekphrastic text. Drawing on visitor response to an ekphrastic display that took place at National Museum Cardiff in 2022—alongside data from a series of in-depth interviews, an online survey, a set of writer’s reflective journals, and a close reading of ekphrastic texts—I argue that Ekphrastic Inquiry can facilitate a nuanced form of simultaneous empathetic engagement and historical perspective for museum visitors.