Touch-based art at Ulrich Museum makes exhibit accessible to all

For a limited time, visitors to Wichita State University’s Ulrich Museum of Art can touch some iconic pieces of art and also get a sense of what it’s like to be visually impaired.

With the “Solving for X = Accessibility” exhibition, the Ulrich Museum explores the topic of making art accessible, a topic that is getting more attention by museums all over the country and by others who say more needs to be done to involve individuals with vision impairment in the cultural life of a community.

The exhibition is part of an ongoing series meant to showcase research at WSU and stimulate conversations about universal topics.

Five works of art from the Ulrich Museum’s collection have been recreated as tactile pieces that can be touched. The pieces including Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell Soup-can screen print “Chicken’n Dumplings.”

A wayfinding mobile app created by a WSU research team also is being tested as part of the exhibition. The app uses voiceover to give directions and detailed information about each of the pieces in the small exhibition.

Used together, the app and the tactile images are meant to give what museum officials call “multisensory access” to some of the Ulrich Museum’s collection.

The exhibition also gives sighted people a chance to experience visual impairment. A visitor can put on glasses that simulate various conditions, from a detached retina to macular degeneration.

Accessible art

Art has a way of building community, noted Sarah Stewart, the art education teacher with Envision, a Wichita-based organization that provides services for people who are blind or visually impaired. Envision helped sponsor the “Solving for X = Accessibility” exhibit.

Stewart cited examples of how art has contributed to a more vibrant culture in Wichita through things like First and Final Fridays events, public art and other displays.

But with limited or no sight, the people Stewart works with don’t have many opportunities to be part of those activities, she noted. After all, the most common way people experience art is to look at it.

Multisensory access has become a buzz phrase in the museum industry, as museums and artists look at how artworks can be experienced in more ways than just through sight. Besides audio tours, access can involve providing braille descriptions and tactile and touchable art or recreations of pieces. Some can include touch-activated sounds and even smells.

Making art accessible takes deliberate actions by both the artists and the places that showcase art, said Stewart.

“Very few practicing artists think about how their art may not be accessible to a large segment of society,” said John Hammer, who holds a Master of Fine Arts degree and has worked in the entertainment, art education and design fields.

An instructional designer at Wichita State since late 2018, Hammer produced the tactile representations of the artwork in “Solving for X = Accessibility.”

He also produced the exhibition’s guidebook with braille descriptions and small-scale representations of each piece of art.

When “Solving for X = Accessibility” opened, several of Stewart’s clients were excited about the prospect of getting to experience art. Some were disappointed, however, when they discovered that it is a limited, one-off exhibition, she said.

Major focus

At WSU, accessibility is a big priority. That’s because in 2016, following a federal civil rights complaint filed by a student who was blind, WSU and the National Federation of the Blind entered into an agreement to make learning and other student processes accessible for those who are blind and visually impaired.

That agreement got Carolyn Speer, the manager of WSU’s instructional design and access division, thinking about ways WSU could improve access.

“I first became interested in the accessibility of public spaces when the Sedgwick County Zoo began displaying touchable statues of zoo animals in the early 1990s,” said Speer, in an emailed response to questions. “When WSU entered into the accessibility agreement with the NFB, I immediately started to think about ways we could use that kind of model to improve the accessibility of our public spaces.

“In particular, I started to pay close attention to what museums in the U.S. and Europe did to provide access to their patrons who were blind,” she said. “Over time, I became convinced that our office of instructional design and access could use that knowledge to start working on accessibility projects that are educational but outside the traditional classroom.”

Recreating art

Over several weeks this past summer and working with a proofreader who is blind, Hammer tested different methods and prototypes to produce the tactile works and the guidebook.

Hammer started with what he considered the simpler of the five pieces: the iconic Warhol.

The most challenging was Roger Shimomura’s “American Portrait #1,” Hammer said. Shimomura, who also teaches at the University of Kansas and was one of Hammer’s professors, is known for combining familiar American cultural references and Asian representations.

In the Ulrich Museum’s Shimomura piece, several familiar cartoon figures are pictured behind the prominently placed Asian male in the painting. Even though nearly all the figures are facing backward, anyone who has seen them will recognize them. It became a challenge both in the audio and tactile interpretations to convey them to those who haven’t.

“I’m still struggling to get my head wrapped around the challenges with the tactile interpretation of two-dimensional art because of its heavy reliance on things like visual metaphor,” Speer said.

“With ‘Solving for X,’ we faced that challenge head-on with the Shimomura piece because it features cartoon characters in unusual positions, and we had to work through how to get at that idea and also teach people who maybe have never seen Beetle Bailey, for example, not only what he looks like, but what he then looks like when walking away.”

Detailed descriptions

While the tactile pieces allow visitors to touch the art, the GuideBeacon app provides lengthy voiceover descriptions of each piece. Developed by WSU computer science professor Vinod Namboodiri and his students, this is the app’s first real-world test and there have been hiccups.

For example, when this visitor asked for a demonstration during one visit to the museum, the app had some problems with its orientation function. But it gets high marks for the in-depth descriptions for each piece.

“It gives you so much detail that I didn’t know was in the paintings,” said Alison Roets, a WSU student who has a visual impairment and works at the museum

As a visitor stopped in front of Heidi Zumbrun’s print “Rabbit,” the woman’s voice on the app described the stance of the depicted rabbit, the position of its ears, the puffy look of its cheeks, which parts of the fur were dirty and grimy and which looked cleaner, and a lot of other information.

‘Solving for X’

One of the reasons Leslie Brothers, who became the Ulrich Museum’s director in 2018, started the “Solving for X” series was to highlight how WSU researchers and staff are working on things that matter in society.

A new exhibition is produced each fall and spring semester. Last fall, the debut of “Solving for X” focused on sustainability. Next spring’s “Solving for X” will feature political science professor Brian Amos’ research on gerrymandering, the controversial political practice of creating select voting districts.

“We’re creating opportunities for people to connect to things that matter to them,” she said.

“Solving for X = Accessibility”

Where: first-floor Grafly Gallery of Wichita State University’s Ulrich Museum of Art, 1845 Fairmount St.

When: Exhibit on display until Sunday, Dec. 8. Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 1-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. The galleries are closed on Mondays and major and university holidays, including Nov. 28 and 29.

How much: Free

This story was originally published November 12, 2019 at 5:01 AM.