Feeling the Museum: Towards Multi-sensory Mediation
Note: Blindness spans a diverse spectrum of experiences. While legal definitions exist—in Germany, a maximum visual acuity of 1/50th in the better eye—these administrative classifications tell us little about lived experiences. This text capitalizes “Blind” to emphasize that Blindness is not primarily a medical condition, but represents a community with its own culture, unique perceptions, and shared experiences.
I am heading a few steps up. I’ve been here before, so I know I’m standing in a high, spacious hall. I hear many echoes. A few people are around, but not many. Some of the voices might be coming from a distant video installation. People are standing in front of a wall—I know this because they are talking about photos that are displayed there. Beneath my feet, the floor is smooth, without a perceptible trace.
I am in the first hall on the ground floor of the Museum of Modern Art MMK in Frankfurt, Germany. As a legally Blind person, an art science theorist, and an inclusion activist, I have often stood in this space to mediate exhibitions for sighted people. In 2023, I initiated the MMK with all senses format, a guided tour examining non-visual moments within exhibitions. The format asks which aspects of an artwork can be opened up through hearing, smelling, and touching. For example, I would prompt my audience to engage with audiovisual spatial installations through sound, or let them explore the surface and weight of ceramics art. Today, one of the exhibits is an untitled work from 2000 by German conceptual artist Rosemarie Trockel. It is composed of switched-on hotplates mounted on a wall, and we carefully approach it to understand how the change in bodily perception is part of the artwork. Together, we feel how it radiates heat the closer we get.
While this exercise plays within the museum’s rules, other approaches, such as touching, requires the museum to temporarily suspend some of its regulations. For this special format, the museum assigned a space for the tour with an exception to the ban on touching the exhibits; however, once the tour is over, the ban is enforced again.
“As places of seeing, art museums are exemplary for demonstrating the invisible side of discrimination against Blind and visually impaired people.”
As places of seeing, art museums are exemplary for demonstrating the invisible side of discrimination against Blind and visually impaired people. Whereas, for example, statues in churches or in public space can be perceived by touch, museums only allow you to look at them. The ban on touching, which has applied to German art museums since the 19th century, condemns Blind and visually impaired people to passively listen to someone else’s perception. Beyond the problems that affect the exhibits themselves, there are additional accessibility barriers, such as spatial factors in orientation and a lack of tactile vocabulary.
Internationally, there are many Blind art mediators like the New York-based Seeing with Photography Collective and the disability rights activist Georgina Kleege. In Germany, I am one of few. Even if I repeatedly draw on discourse from English-speaking contexts, the place of my narrative remains Germany—a country, that, according to the 2023 United Nations state review report, is still lagging behind Anglo-North American countries when it comes to implementing inclusion measures as defined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). European (art) museums have historically been, and continue to be, a place of exclusion for the Blind and visually impaired community.
Those who only see do not feel
I am again in a large museum building—this time as a visitor. In order to find my way around independently, I use tactile guidance systems. These can be pre-installed, such as those that we often see at train stations. Models of rooms or buildings and brief descriptions of them can also help me to find my way around. However, with the exception of the Historical City Museum in Frankfurt, none of Frankfurt’s museums have tactile guidance systems. I then use the museum architecture such as walls and other features for orientation. But when I do this, I usually put every security guard on alert. Not only do sighted people often warn me that my cane might touch something, but museums also use important orientation markers for exhibition purposes—yet another thing I must not touch.
The ever-present ban on touching exhibits often extends to walls, columns, and other space-dividing elements. I must rely on a sighted person for every route, whether it’s to the toilet or to the next exhibit. Even with the QR codes next to the artworks, which are part of an audio guide, I need sighted assistance to ensure I don’t accidentally touch the artwork.
“It shows the inherent ableism when we ask which abilities one needs to feel comfortable in a city or building.”
The entire built environment is constructed by sighted people for the needs of sighted people. The Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa describes the orientation of architecture toward visual features, with critical intent, as “ocular-centrism.” This hegemony of the visual in architecture leads to sidelining hearing, the sense of temperature, and other perceptions when it comes to navigating a building. It shows the inherent ableism when we ask which abilities one needs to feel comfortable in a city or building. Similarly, the decision-making in the design of art museums is primarily determined by ocular-centristic rules—whether it is a matter of enabling spatial orientation or the tactile perception of art.
What I am or am not allowed to feel is beyond my control, and it is often preservation considerations that dictate what and how I am allowed to perceive. This is justified by the obligation to defend (art) objects against the wear and tear of time. It institutionalizes a decision that contains an ocular-centrist norm of perception disguised as a matter of fact: after all, everyone will agree that the artwork should not be damaged, right? However, when touching is emphasized as invasive, it is often ignored that this also applies to sight. It is not without reason that the lighting conditions of particularly old works need to be carefully checked and aligned. If the norm of preservation would be prioritized over the wish to exhibit, countless cultural treasures would wait in the isolated darkness of archives—nothing more would happen with them. In ethical terms, this means that an exception is made for those who are able to see. Priority is given to making artworks accessible to as many sighted people as possible, even at the expense of excluding those who cannot see.
The marginalized tactile knowledge
As a small group, we are gathering around a mechanical crusher. Max Brück’s installation 0-5mm (2022) is a large mechanism that transforms rubble from the former coal region near Katowice, Poland, into fine sand. As part of a guided tour for the Kunsthaus Wiesbaden, Germany, I let all tour participants touch the rough machine, from the large steel sieve to the fine mechanical gear construction. Finally, the artist himself takes a jar of the almost dusty sand from his installation and passes it around so that everyone can feel and smell it. The aim is not only to have held the artwork’s materials in one’s hands, but also to encourage a shared exchange about what has been perceived.
It is striking that neither European art education nor art studies have developed a language for tactile perceptions. This is particularly noticeable when exploring surfaces. The German language, for example, offers only limited vocabulary for describing tactile sensations and often falls into a simple dualism between hard and soft, warm and cold.
“Blind and visually impaired people learn to translate their perception for sighted people or to adapt it to sighted perceptual habits.”
Again, at the Museum of Modern Art MMK in Frankfurt, a ceramic work is passed on from person to person. Pierre de touche (2022) by Rosemarie Trockel is an elongated, irregularly fired ceramic piece about the size of a human thigh. The surface is smooth in some places but slightly wavy. In other places, there are small holes and cracks that are sharp or jagged. One visitor conjures the image of a landscape, with valleys and mountains, to describe what they feel. Small indentations and precisely crafted sections of the surface show that it has been worked on intensively with the hands. It takes a practiced sense of touch to be able to perceive these details—a skill that Blind and visually impaired people in particular have, as we use our sense of touch daily to pick up information about our surroundings.
Blind and visually impaired people learn to translate their perception for sighted people or to adapt it to sighted perceptual habits. This forced adaptation can be described as hermeneutical injustice–a concept proposed by feminist philosopher Miranda Fricker.
Hermeneutical injustice describes contexts and structures in which a socially marginalized group is not taken seriously in their capacity as knowledgeable individuals and systematically prevented from developing tools to interpret a situation. Jackie Leach Scully, a bioethicist specializing in disability and feminist bioethics, illustrates this in her 2018 essay “From ‘She would say that, wouldn’t she?’ to ‘Does she take sugar?’—Epistemic Injustice and Disability.” Scully describes the effects of keeping a child with a mobility impairment away from other children with mobility impairments. This child will probably always think that being able to walk is a desirable ability. Without contact with other people with mobility impairments, the child is more likely to develop a deficient self-understanding and will not have the opportunity to develop their own framework for their own experiences.
“This systemic exclusion of the sense of touch within dominant exhibition practices affects not only Blind and visually impaired audiences—it is also a barrier against tactile knowledge for all.”
Similarly, hermeneutical injustice applies to a language or ways of perceiving that fail to represent Blind perception, and especially tactile perception. To develop such a language, we need access to tactile objects, as well as practical and theoretical work by tactile experts and Blind art scholars. Books with tactile examples and tactile didactic material such as tactile calculation boards are a matter of course in education for the Blind. Yet, within hegemonic art education, tactile knowledge is not recognized as a scientific resource. While a Blind or visually impaired child is certainly not denied their experiences, they learn in the institutions of fine arts that a sensual approach beyond the visual is not permitted. This systemic exclusion of the sense of touch within dominant exhibition practices affects not only Blind and visually impaired audiences—it is also a barrier against tactile knowledge for all.
(Re)forming art and art institutions
In their text “On Rehearsing Access,” artist and designer Ren Loren Britton describes how Access Riders—a formalized request for implementing a person’s or community’s access needs—can lead to structural changes within institutions. Being able to touch artifacts was initially an access element for my visit to museums to take place at all. Inscribing this element of access into the institution means “making space for non-normative perception.” Allowing touch, in turn, intervenes deeply in the established understanding of art, which is based on a distanced view of exhibits. There is a deep conflict between making an artwork exclusively accessible to a sighted audience, and the decision to open a work to the perception of Blind and visually impaired audiences—with the possibility of the work not being accessible to a sighted majority forever. This conflict should be conducted openly, recognizing that exhibitions are mostly curated by non-disabled people who usually have a clear position within this conflict.
“Let us change our approach and try to interpret exclusion from the visual arts no longer as a deficit, but as recognition that Blind and visually impaired people have specific non-visual knowledge.”
Let us change our approach and try to interpret exclusion from the visual arts no longer as a deficit, but as recognition that Blind and visually impaired people have specific non-visual knowledge. Based on this, curation, architecture, and ways of perceiving can be directly changed, as demonstrated recently by the Schwules Museum in Berlin. In 2023, it presented the exhibition “queering the crip—cripping the queer,” a historically oriented exhibition that focused on the intersection between disability and gender. Kate Brehme, a Blind expert, was involved in the initial conceptualization. Brehme implemented a tactile guidance system, supported by an audio guide, that led visitors through the entire exhibition. The audio guide contained descriptions of objects and rooms, as well as texts on the walls. Paintings and historical photographs were translated into tactile models and all videos entailed audio descriptions.
In my work with the Museum of Modern Art MMK in Frankfurt, I experience a lot of willingness to enable tactile perceptions within the exhibition. Nevertheless, this requires sensitivity on the part of all those involved in an exhibition. Another big art museum in Frankfurt, the Museum of Applied Arts, bravely took on the task of tactile mediation in 2024, only to fail due to organizational barriers. Questions about how to legally adjust artwork loan agreements to allow touching highlighted a lack of established conventions and exemplary practices.
The example of the Schwules Museum demonstrates how the disability justice approach of “nothing about us without us” can initiate first steps for transformation processes. However, the administrative barriers that occurred in the example of the Museum of Applied Arts highlight that we still have a long way to go for broader systemic change. There are still many spaces where participation appears to exist, but without the target group ever being able to seriously contribute their knowledge. Accessibility should be implemented sustainably in cultural spaces like museums, theaters, and schools as a default.
Lilian Korner (they/them) is a Blind art historian, inclusion activist, and access dramaturge who studies and works in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Their interest in sensory forms of knowledge derived from previous studies in philosophy, literature, and art history in Düsseldorf, Germany. At home between the Rhine and the Main, they ask what and how the culture of the Blind and visually impaired could be. Beyond adaptation, Fabian-Lilian works in museums and theaters—in places that are structured according to the needs of them. Fabian-Lilian loves to use artistic means to overturn traditional habits and to play with apparent (sensual) certainties.