Within this roughly forty-three million, you will find every race, religion, gender, sexuality, financial level, and creed, because of this, artistic institutions both big and small should keep this small, but diverse population in mind when installing exhibits or doing new construction.
I am aware that art museums and institutions are wary of both change, and outside ideas, but, we are not asking you to take the protective glass off the Mona Lisa or let people touch thousand-year-old Etruscan vases, [most of us are reasonably sane people], but that being said, things can be done to help people with disabilities experience your institution more easily. Some of these things will cost nothing but time to implement but others will take a financial investment.
Within this document, I have written twelve suggestions on ways you could help people with disabilities better experience both your exhibits and institution.
That being said, It is impossible to account for every disability, situation, and combination, but a small start is still a start.
Plus you must always remember that what you may view as things that mostly help the disabled will also be used by the pregnant, the temporarily disabled, and the elderly, the last of which we will all hopefully become.
[1]
3D scan the thousand-year-old Etruction vase, and 3D print either an actual scale or quarter-scale version of it.
While you are at it, scan and print versions of as many sculptures and vases as you can safely do. This will allow the hard of seeing to touch and experience the object's shape.
Hire historians and artisans to make period-accurate replicas of some objects so the visually impaired can feel the texture of the material that the object is made of.
Most people know that shiny glazed porcelain looks different than dull terracotta, but those who cannot see the difference should be able to feel it, these replicas will help them experience the shape and texture of the works.
[2]
Photograph everything, and put it online, not all, but some of us are either home-bound or have trouble getting out in certain weather, and because of this we may not be able to see that blockbuster Gorky show you spent the last two years getting funding and borrowing work from museums and millionaire collectors for, but if it is online we could see and read about the work in the show and experience from home. You could also sell an inexpensive PDF of the catalog of the show.
Using free programs Skype or Google Meetings, you could in real time, stream the lectures the curators spent the last two weeks writing and rewriting online, this will also allow real-time questions from people at home. After the opening, these lecturers can be archived on YouTube or your institution's website.
With applications like YouTube, Skype, Google Meetings, and Discord, almost anything is possible.
[3]
Does that tiny Dutch landscape need to be hung that high, or can it be hung at sitting level? I'm not saying all works need to be hung at sitting level, but if you have six paintings by the same Flemish master, all of which are sub-8x10, maybe you could hang one or two at sitting level. People, such as children, short people, and individuals in wheelchairs rarely get to see small paintings up close.
Always remember, the higher the work is hung, the further we have to back away to see it.
[4]
Hire more people who are fluent in ASL. Currently, four percent of the population of America is either deaf or hard of hearing. That's over eleven million potential art enthusiasts who might need to know what the tour guide is discussing when they are talking with their backs to the visitors about one of the five blue Yves Klein paintings in the room. I am not saying that this person who knows ASL has to be on staff 24/7 or should be the institution's dedicated ASL interpreter, but I am saying that it would be nice if one out of three tour guides were fluent in ASL.
[5]
Start and end events earlier. Although the number of people with disabilities who can drive has increased, a large percentage of us still depend on public transportation, because of this, we might not be able to attend your after-hours multispeaker event about the history of Chinese woodblock prints and its effect on the work of European artists circa 1890, and still catch the bus home, but if you end your event before, let's say, six in the afternoon we might make it home using the public bus.
[6]
Well-labeled and accessible elevators and bathrooms. We all know elevator doors aren't the most aesthetically pleasing slabs of shiny metal in the world and well-marked, and lit bathrooms are still considered taboo among some of the more conservative-minded of us. Still, the need to either empty one’s bladder or go to the fourth floor to see the newly installed shiny slabs of metal that make up the Donald Judd retrospective is a biologically innate need we all have, and asking for directions to the elevator or the bathroom with the golden toilet by Maurizio Cattelan might not be easily done by people with disabilities that make vocal communications either hard or impossible.
Another bathroom-related solution is when installing the doors of the restroom entrance it would be useful if the doors swung both ways. When it comes to doors and how they relate to scooters and wheelchairs I have found that it is much easier to push than pull.
[7]
According to the Americans with disabilities act retail aisles should at minimum be thirty-six inches wide, I have found when going in a straight line this width is perfect for things like grocery shopping, but there is nowhere near enough spacing for things like very delicate, expensive, and irreplaceable objects on hollow wood pedestals.
The solution to the spacing problem will vary from situation to situation, and institution, but before you set up a room of sculptures have a person sit in the raggedy abused manual museum wheelchair and have another person push them around the exhibit and see what may or may not be hit by an untrained viewer pushing around an unfamiliar wheelchair in a room they have never been in before, and if a pedestal gets hit, make adjustments.
[8]
Three or four times a year hire one or two people with various disabilities to walk around your building or exhibition and allow them to honestly critique the building and its exhibitions from their point of view. I'm not saying they need to like the building or what's in it on an aesthetic level, but they might see or notice something that may not affect the nondisabled but will affect them.
For example, there is more than a low chance that the wire bump in the doorway of the video room showing the latest digitally remastered version of Entr'acte by René Clair might not be a big deal to you, might be a massive tripping hazard to someone with mobility problems. Still, it might also prevent some people from entering the room altogether.
All buildings are both temperature and moisture-sensitive, I suggest doing building critiques during both the coldest part of the year and the warmest part of the year. That way you can see if that slightly slippery tile in the entranceway that is no big deal to your average person isn't a full-on slip-n-slide to a person with braces or a cane.
[9]
Currently, a standard camera doorbell can be bought for under two hundred dollars, this cheap and simple-to-install investment is the one thing that every gallery, museum, and art institution both big and small should have.
This small investment will prevent the one thing, solo travelers, with a disability fear, which is not being able to open the door of the building you traveled to because the door to the entrance weighs a metric ton. Plus because the building lacks a doorbell or outside intercom, you have no easy way to contact the front desk.
A simple-to-install video doorbell will prevent this from happening.
[10]
Speaking of doors and walkways, how can we see the work in your well-curated collection if we cannot find or safely access the accessible entrance?
Because of the age of the buildings museums, galleries, and exhibition halls are frequently housed in, the accessible entrance is usually placed around the back of the building where the storage, large objects, and employee entrance is or used to be. If it is not there it's usually part of the separate gift shop entrance near the coat storage rack.
Either way, most of us will understand that you cannot tack a modern ramp and entrance onto a set of granite and marble stairs, with ornate doors constructed before the invention of the light bulb, but what, you could do is build better walkways leading to the accessible entrance, and make sure it's well labeled and lit.
[11]
Other than Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Yinka Shonibare CBE, Yayoi Kusama, Vincent van Gogh, Thaniel Ion Lee, or Chuck Close, does your institution have any other disabled artists in its collection, if you do is it cited in the bio text on the wall, and if it is mentioned in the wall bio does it note how their disability does or does not affect their work or artistic process.
Even the smallest written or spoken discussion about the artist's physical or psychological disabilities may help the viewer understand the artistic motives of the creator of the work, and it might even inspire someone with a similar situation to make and show their work.
[12]
My last suggestion is that when you do events such as openings or talks you give the public a minimum of one week's notice because when you are disabled, giving us anything less than a week's notice will greatly reduce our ability to go at all.
As I said earlier, more and more of us can drive every year, however, most of us can't drive at all, and depend on either public transportation or rides from friends and family, in the cases of those of us who rely on family and friends for transport, those people need to make sure they can be available on said dates and times to help.
Not all, but some cities have special taxis or minibusses for the disabled, but to get the exact times you need, you need to schedule the rides at least ten to nine days in advance because every day below seven reduces your chance of getting the time you need or want by ten percent.
On top of that, you need to pay with exact change, and the amount is usually some odd amount like three dollars and 20 cents, if you are short even a nickel, they will unstrap you and your chair and remove you from the bus. Also if you need to take someone with you on said minibus, you need to have twice that amount in exact change.
So what I'm saying is, that the more time you give someone with a disability the better.
In conclusion, I am unfortunately aware, that most smaller or medium-sized institutions have neither the money nor manpower to implement half of these suggestions. That being said, most places can, if they are willing, implement some of these concepts.
Contact - thanielionlee@gmail.com
This essay was commissioned by Maiza Hixson Ph.D.
