Abstract :
Drawing on interviews with blind people, this
paper examines both their exclusion from museums
and galleries and their responses to the
art educational provision that is specifically
designed to remedy that marginalisation. Blind
visitors’ responses to these educational projects
were polarised; respondents were either highly
critical or very enthusiastic. This paper begins by
outlining the interviewees’ criticisms which
included; education officers’ misconception of
how touch facilitates learning and aesthetic
response, a lack of educational progression and
blind people’s exclusion from mainstream events.
I then ask why, given these problems, did other
respondents reply so favourably, suggest that
these high levels of satisfaction had little to do
with museum provision but were in fact the
result of social interaction and of rare inclusion
within the sighted community. I argue that, ironically,
this sense of inclusion is premised on blind
visitors’ structural exclusion from art institutions.
Finally, the article examines those visitors who,
illicitly or otherwise, already experience some
aspects of the museum in multisensory terms,
but maintain that until museums’ and galleries’
ocularcentric orientation is reconfigured, there
will be little possibility for these rogue visitors to
develop their knowledge of art. Likewise, without
institutional change, educational events for the
blind will continue to be an inadequate supplement
to a structure that is and remains inequitable.
How can Anthony Caro’s Sculpture Two or
Canaletto’s Piazza San Marcobe made accessible
to people who have never seen or who no longer
see [1]? Can art be meaningful to blind people and
what does gallery visiting mean to them? These
are not rhetorical questions. For once the Disability
Discrimination Act (DDA) comes fully into force in
2004 museum and gallery educators will be
legally required to facilitate blind people’s access
to art [2]. What resources are already in place,
then, and what do blind people think about them?
Researching the needs of blind people is to
some extent fallacious. To state the obvious but
often ignored fact, blind people are a heterogeneous
group, coming from all social classes, all
cultural, racial, religious and educational backgrounds.
Their reasons for visiting museums and
galleries almost invariably have more in common
those of the non-blind than with other blind
people. Blind people go to galleries because they
love Impressionism,because they’ve always been
interested in early Christian iconography, because
it’s somewhere to take their grand-children or
meet their friends, because they like the space or
the sense of quiet, because the café is good or
the shop sells nice cards or because they are
professionally involved in art practice. There is no
one approach or subject that is appropriate
because someone is blind.
At the same time the museum and gallery
system positions blind people as a unitary group.
However diverse individual blind people might
be, as museum visitors they are primarily defined
in relation to a lack of sight. The continuing lack of
basic provision means that blind people can only
visit in a disabled capacity; tactile flooring is still
virtually non-existent, good lighting is often sacrificed
for ambience and large print labelling
generally comes in a distant second to the
designer’s overarching exhibition concept.
Museums and galleries may flaunt their access
credentials (especially in funding applications) but
access is often tokenistic and tends to remain low
on the list of institutional priorities. Blind people
are constituted as a marginal group not because
their blindness makes them so, but because the
ocularcentricity of museums and galleries
ensures that non-visual engagement with art and
artefacts remains virtually inconceivable in all but
the most innovative of institutions. Thus, within
this institutional context, it is important to
research the needs of blind people precisely in
order that blindness ceases to become the determining
aspect of their visit.
Although the people interviewed for this
research had varied interests, visiting patterns,
levels of residual sight and types of blindness
they tended fall into one of two polarised camps.
They either thought that education provision in
museums was wonderful or that it was dreadful
with very few people occupying a middle of the
road position. This apparently clear-cut antithesis
was created in part through the research process
since we recruited respondents from education
events at museums and from special interest
groups and thereby interviewed people who are
actively involved. Adverts for respondents in
specialist papers and email lists similarly resulted
in respondents who had strong opinions; after all
people do not regularly attend events or groups
or volunteer for interview if they are indifferent on
a subject. Yet, although the recruitment process
was instrumental here it is important to remember
that this is the constituency of blind visitors to
museums and galleries. Being half-hearted suggests
that museum trips are something you can take or
leave, a level of choice which is not as open to
blind people as to the non-blind. This paper
begins by outlining some of the problems with
current programming that the interviewees identified
and then goes on to ask why, given these
gaps in provision, were so many other people
happy with what is available for blind visitors. I
argue that this high level of satisfaction has little
to do with museum provision and ironically may
be created in part by the endemically exclusive
nature of museums.
