Creating a Multisensory Journey in Art for the Blind

"Touching the lion sculpture" by Ann licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Touching the lion sculpture” by Ann licensed under CC BY 2.0

Source: The Atlantic

New programs in art museums are integrating a multisensory method of interacting with art, focused around creating an entire interactive experience.

Museum educator Georgia Kratz, creator of the ‘Mind’s Eye’ series at the Guggenheim in New York, developed a traveling program that brings art experiences to communities of blind persons. It includes a series of workshops that intertwine language, smell and touch in unique ways to challenge traditional methods of interacting with art only visually. Kratz tailors the programs around each art piece to truly create an experience, by finding materials that feel like the art piece or that mirror the artist’s style, by ‘translating’ a visual cue into a scent – like plants and environments – and by even creating spatial cues that mirror the magnitude of a particular art piece.

The “multisensory approach” challenges traditional art on multiple levels; it questions how art can best be interpreted, examined and appreciated; it delves into the importance of texture on canvas art; it poses challenges for program coordinators to decide how their subjectivity to any given art piece will shape the way the museum visitor interprets the piece, and how those tailored programs might capture art.

Read full story at: The Atlantic

Arts Media & Culture, News
Arts, Media & Culture, News