Project for Art Accessibility - Proposal

While all art historians aim to continuously engage with the visual world, I have a particularly strong awareness of my reliance on vision as an art historian because of a serious genetic retinal degenerative disease that runs in my family. Growing up with a visually impaired mother who is also an activist for disability rights, I have always been aware of the struggles and limitations that people with disabilities face on a daily basis. In the last few years as I have laid the foundation for my career in art history, I have become increasingly aware of the utter inaccessibility of the art world to the visually impaired. While specific branches of law are responsible for the progression of disability rights, the process of accessibility reform is slow and seems to be far removed from the art community. I feel that steps need to be taken to create awareness in the art community about the serious accessibility problems our field faces as a series of practices that revolve entirely around vision.
As an extra-curricular project I have taken on the task of documenting the effectiveness of the accommodations for the visually impaired at the most prominent art-related American institutions. I believe strongly in collaboration and discussion as the foundation of successful pedagogical method, and therefore feel that as an educator, art historian, and someone with ties to the visually impaired community, I have a responsibility to help make the art historical conversation more accessible. My goal is to produce an in-depth study and comparison of the disability accommodations in the U.S., specifically contrasting my results with many of the prominent institutions in Europe. This study could eventually contribute to the designing of a standardized format that would apply across museums and other exhibits to ensure access to everyone. The project has two goals: The first is to compile comprehensive data on the current state of art accessibility to the visually impaired in the U.S. The second is to demonstrate feasible solutions to accessibility problems by holding a local exhibition that features multi-sensory art objects. In the last few decades art practices that revolve around tactile, auditory, and phenomenological elements have found their way into the art historical canon; however, they are mainly revered for their conceptual value, as opposed to their inclusive significance. Creating an exhibition that demonstrates the diverse methods employed by contemporary artists to branch out of the visual realm and utilizes feasible curatorial methods to ensure accessibility would help set a precedent for accessibility reform in American art institutions. It would also send an important message to the visually impaired community that engagement with art objects is not limited to the sighted. It is a common assumption that the visual nature of art as it has existed for centuries necessarily excludes this segment of the population. With the development of new technologies and the recent history of new media art, this is no longer the case.