A Feel for Art

On a recent morning I visited the Vermont Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired. I attend their Peer Assisted Learning and Support (PALS) group in South Burlington a couple of times per year to talk about our Art at Hand tours and encourage their participants to visit Shelburne Museum. I always bring a hands-on art project based on the Museum's collections.

This most recent craft was inspired by the Stencil House. I have been been studying Stencil in preparation for our new gallery talk, Exploring Colonial Revival: Prentis and Stencil Houses, which debuts when the Museum opens to the public on May 12th. Wall stencils, painted by itinerant artists who traveled from town to town and worked on commission, were popular decorative features in American homes from approximately 1815 to 1840. Much of the painting in the Stencil House parlor is original, having been stenciled in the 1830s and cleaned in an extensive 1999-2000 conservation project.

Stencil House Parlor, Photograph by J. David Bohl

Stencil House Fireplace, Photograph by J. David Bohl

After introducing the house and describing in detail the stenciling above the fireplace in the parlor (see above), I oriented the PALS group to their art materials. Chalk pastels, which feel dry and powdery, are easy to blend. Oil pastels are waxy, like crayons. The pastel paper we drew on had some texture to hold the pigment. I also brought a variety of stencils in different shapes; animal, vegetable, mineral, we had it all.

Most of the folks who attend the PALS group have age-related vision impairments, such as macular degeneration or cataracts. They are not totally blind, and for the most part they do have a sense of light and color. Even so, the creative process is challenging. One participant, Jerry, said that though he'd never tried drawing, "recently I've been trying a lot of new things I've never done." Historically, people who are blind or visually impaired have felt alienated by the art world. We at Shelburne Museum are excited to play a small part in turning those perceptions around.

Click here to learn more about our tours for special audiences or to register for Art at Hand.

Shelburne Museum Does NEMA

Recently Burlington hosted the 94th annual New England Museum Association (NEMA) conference. Staff from Shelburne Museum participated in several sessions on a wide range of topics from new building construction to LED lighting.

Paige and I co-chaired a panel discussion called, "Open Doors, Open Minds: Serving Special Audiences on a Budget," in which we spoke about Art at Hand, our tours for visitors who are blind or visually impaired, and Mornings at the Museum for people with Alzheimer's. We also worked with Paula Rais, Director of Community Engagement at the Children's Museum of New Hampshire. She runs Exploring Our Way, an acclaimed program for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Paige and I are both "Emerging Museum Professionals" or EMPs; we haven't been in the field very long, and neither of us had been to a professional conference before. Chairing a session was a true honor, and we had been preparing for it for almost nine months!


It began back in February with a call for proposals. This year's conference theme was "Pushing the Envelope: Innovation and the Future of Museums." We knew the special audiences we serve are quite unique; many institutions are just beginning to explore their potential. We also recognized that some of the museums well known for their array of accessible programming, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, have a designated "access coordinator" and corporate sponsors who facilitate and fund their tours. We wanted to show smaller institutions with more limited resources that they can offer meaningful programming to audiences with special needs.

Mornings at the Museum

Art at Hand

Throughout the spring and summer we coordinated with Paula, outlining our session and elucidating some general principles we've all learned. They included:

• Assembling a team of advisors who are experts in the audience you are engaging
• Soliciting feedback at every point in the process
• Seeing special tours and programs as stepping stones to individual museum visits; anticipating and encouraging participants to return on their own.

When the day of our presentation finally came, we were thrilled to share our experiences with forty fellow museum professionals looking to start their own access programs. We fielded questions on everything from wheelchair guidelines to staff training. I found it empowering to share both the highlights and the challenges of these programs, and came out with new energy and excitement about our special tours--which was well worth the time spent. Thank you, NEMA 2012!

i-loview, Accessible Technology!

This season Shelburne Museum received a generous gift from the Vermont-based accessible technology company, Ai Squared -- two i-loview handheld video magnifiers for  visually impaired museum visitors. Equipped with sophisticated cameras, the devices allow users to see an image up to 32 times its original size.

Intern Nina uses an i-loview magnifier on an Art at Hand tour of the Ticonderoga

We have put the magnifiers to good use in our Art at Hand program for the visually impaired. We've used them, for example, to see the tiny anchor pattern that dots the dining room carpet on the steamboat Ticonderoga. Later this month we will employ them at the General Store for up-close look at objects behind the counter or high up on the shelves. The i-loview magnifiers have been indispensable on these special tours.
Now, the devices are even more accessible to our visitors. Through closing day on October 28th they are available to check out at the Information Desk just behind the Museum Store!

Anne displays the i-loview magnifiers now available for visitors to check out at the Information Desk

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Rebecca White, Marketing Project Manager at Ai Squared, who wrote her own article about Art at Hand on their "Zoomed In" blog. She explains that while the company's flagship product, ZoomText magnification and reading software, has been on the market for over twenty years, the i-loview is an innovative development in accessible hardware. "We do everything we can to stay on top of technology," she says. "The i-loview helps our customers on the go--whether they're at the grocery store or an art museum." The device, White emphasizes, allows people who are visually impaired to "stay connected to the world and maintain their sense of independence."

White expresses a passionate belief that cultural institutions should be accessible to the tight-knit community of visually impaired Vermonters whom Ai Squared knows well. The company moved to the southern part of the state 1992 and, as she describes, its corporate culture just "feels Vermont." Then she pauses, realizing that, "maybe that only makes sense to Vermonters!" Certainly we at Shelburne Museum take pride in our deep regional connections and are glad to establish a partnership with such an esteemed local business. Ai Squared makes it a point to give back to the state they call home, and we thank them heartily for their generosity.

Update: If you'd like to learn more about Art at Hand, check out this article published in the Burlington Free Press on Sunday, October 21st.

Looking Beyond Sight

The following is a guest post written by Shelburne Museum member Shirley Katz. She and her husband, George, attended an Art at Hand tour for museum visitors who are blind or visually impaired. Here's what she had to say about their experience: 

The Lions Club sponsored a day at Shelburne Museum for the blind and visually impaired. It was a described, hands-on tour of two of the exhibits: The steamboat Ticonderoga and the Lighthouse.

 

 

The Ti is very impressive, now "docked" in a grassy basin on the museum grounds.

Museum guides provided replicas (or near-replicas) for everyone to get a feel for the boat. 

 

Then we boarded the Ti to hear an excellent visual description. The Ti was restored to appear as it may have looked in 1923. The cherry wood paneling and adornments are truly beautiful. As a sighted person, I appreciated this even more as we were invited to feel the detailing.

We even got a feel for what it may have been like to take the controls.

Back to the area just in front of the dining room, we learned more about this magnificent vessel. 

The floor here looks like a puzzle. The guides had a sample piece of what the flooring is really like.

Our guide also pointed out that the carpeting in the dining room looks like it is made up of tiny anchors--very appropriate! Can you see them?

 

The museum now has two magnifiers for visually impaired people to check out while on a tour. They were generously donated by Ai Squared, and this was the first day they were used. Here Geo is looking at the ceiling while also seeing it up close in the magnifier. 

 

We walked back for a tour of the Lighthouse before taking the shuttle back to the main entrance.   

Thank you, Shirley! We are offering three additional Art at Hand tours this season. For more information or to register, visit http://shelburnemuseum.org/learn/adults/activities-and-tours/tours-for-special-audiences/. 

Art at Hand

October is the ninth annual Art Beyond Sight awareness month, which strives to increase access to the so-called "visual" arts for people who are blind. Through programs like Art at Hand, a pilot program at the museum for visitors who are blind and visually impaired, the museum world is exploring how art encompasses far more than the eye can see.

As Betsy Zaborowski, a representative for the National Federation of the Blind, has described, a blind person's white cane has the power to inspire "a lot of assumptions...and a lot of discomfort" in others. One of these longstanding assumptions is that people who are blind or visually impaired cannot appreciate or enjoy museums.

That stigma, however, is gradually disappearing. Due in large part to the commitment and encouragement of nonprofits like Art Beyond Sight and VSA-Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, institutions across the country, including Shelburne Museum, are finding creative ways to make their collections accessible to this community. Educators are bringing art vividly to life using detailed verbal descriptions, tactile materials, sounds, and smells.

During Art at Hand's pilot season, we have offered five tours and tested a combination of strategies to capture the essence of works of art for people who may not be able to see them. In one instance, museum guide Lee Dowling presented Manet's Blue Venice. She first spoke about the colors and texture of oil paint, the dimensions of the work, and the subject matter, and then continued with a sensory description--based on her own travels--of Venetian canals filled with murky waters and spirited gondaliers. On another tour, guide Elizabeth Sabens clipped fresh herbs, including chives and lemon thyme, from the Hat and Fragrance garden as an introduction to quilting and methods of quilt preservation.

Perhaps our most memorable moment yet was a tour of the Circus Building. Guide Georgia Pendleton brought in fresh hay to capture the atmosphere of life under the Big Top, and we received special permission for the group to feel the museum's wood-carved Dentzel carousel horses. Finally, we brought them outside for a ride on our operating carousel. One visitor wrote to us: "The best part was the Merry-Go-Round ride. It brought me back to when I was a child and could see."