The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics explores questions of aesthetic preference, i.e., who likes what, for which reasons, and under which situational and historical circumstances, and it analyzes the functions of aesthetic preferences and practices for individuals and societies. The MPIEA is currently the only research institution in the world that is solely dedicated to interdisciplinary research on aesthetic perception and evaluation.

The Russian Academy of the Science of Arts in Moscow (GaChN) may be considered its historical predecessor: There, between 1921 and 1929, researchers from the arts, cultural studies, psychology, and neurology collaborated with artists—among them, significantly, Vassily Kandinsky—conducting cross-disciplinary research projects that investigated the aesthetics of individual art forms.

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