Touch Tour and Other Tactile Experiences
Basics
For many students, touch is primarily a way of acquiring information or accessing a work of art. For others, tactile experiences provide an additional venue of perception and help to complete their mental image of an object.
Touch Programs
How to Use This Tool
Getting Started
Try It Yourself
Touch Programs
Tactile Museums
A number of museums around the world provide architectural and sculptural models that make masterpieces accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired. Exact plaster copies of original sculptures are available to be touched, while architectural structures are reproduced as small-scale tactile models that can offer opportunities to explore the interior of a building as well.
Guided Touch Tour
Many art museums and galleries offer this option: visitors who are blind or visually impaired can touch a number of original artworks, displayed in the galleries or an alternative space. A trained education professional or docent guides the tour. Usually the works, chosen by a team of conservation and museum education professionals, are thematic or representative of the museum’s or gallery’s collection.
Self-Guided Touch Tour
Some museums allow blind and visually impaired visitors to explore art on their own in the museum’s galleries. Touchable objects are identified by Braille and large-print labels. This option requires security personnel to receive additional training.
Handling Sessions and Other Tactile Experiences
Some museums offer visitors the opportunity for in-depth tactile investigation of selected works, frequently in an alternate space. It is crucial that this not become a “segregated” program, but rather a supplementary educational approach to gallery programming. Some “handling objects” are neither artworks nor replicas; they are designed to stimulate the user’s imagination and metaphorical thinking. For example, educators at the Tate Modern use splintered Plexiglas to recreate the quality of some of Pablo Picasso’s Spanish Civil War paintings; in the same program, silicone breast implants convey the paradoxical quality of some of Salvador Dali’s Surrealist paintings.
Three-Dimensional Models
When an artwork is two-dimensional or oversized and so cannot be fully explored through touch, a three-dimensional model can supplement a touch tour in the galleries.
Replicas, Models, Facsimiles, and Props
Art and historical museums sometimes use three-dimensional models, props, and replicas of the objects depicted in a painting to make it accessible to visitors who are blind or visually impaired.
Three-Dimensional Interpretations and Relief Sculptures
Three-dimensional interpretations can recreate not only basic composition and color but also translate stylistic properties such as texture and brushwork into a touchable experience. Museums employ these means to make accessible some of the most important works in their collections and special exhibitions that cannot be touched for conservation reasons.
Contemporary Artworks Made to Be Touched
Many artists, both sighted and visually impaired, create tactile and multisensory works of art expressly so that blind and visually impaired people can actively explore them.
How to Use This Tool
In Museums
The choice of Touch Programs (such as guided touch tours; self-guided touch tours; handling sessions and three-dimensional models; or contemporary artworks made to be touched) depends upon an individual museum’s policy and educational philosophy.
In Classrooms
Many of these techniques can be adapted to the classroom, including handling sessions and other tactile experiences; replicas, models, facsimiles, and props; and tactile diagrams with verbal guidance of the hands. See also chapters 8 and 9 of Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment, on art making and integrating art into the curriculum.
Getting Started
Familiarize yourself with the guidelines on touching works of art.
Read about other learning tools, such as the guidelines for giving verbal descriptions (chapter 5 of Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment).
Read the descriptions of museum programs (chapter 11 of Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment).
Read about conservation concerns, as described in chapter 4 of Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment.
Try It Yourself
Take a touch tour, either guided or self-guided, at a local museum.
Design a handling session. Brainstorm tactile materials you can use with students in your classroom and museum. Begin with a simple work, perhaps a still life or a portrait of a single person.
