The Story of Accessible Art at the

Digital Humanities and Literary

Cognition Lab

Natasha De Souza, Sarah Geist, Soohyun Cho

What Is Accessible Art?
● Accessible art is based on the assumption that everyone should be
able to enjoy art.
○ Challenges the way that we typically consume art
○ Proposes art as a multisensory experience
○ Allows audience to connect with more aspects of the pieces
○ Uses technology (audio recordings, 3D printing, etc.) to aid in
increasing accessibility
Event 1 - Accessible Art at the Broad

● April 2015, Broad Art

Museum
● Partnership with Exceptions,
an MSU-based journal
focused on highlighting
creative work made by
people with visual
disabilities; Broad Art
Museum; College of Arts
and Letters
Event 1 - Accessible Art at the Broad
● Each poem was paired with a
piece of tactile art
○ MSU students in a poetry
class wrote original poems
○ MSU students in a studio
art class created 3D art
pieces inspired by the
poems
Event 1 - Accessible Art at the Broad

● The event programs and

all of the poems were
transcribed in Braille and
made available to visitors
● Patrons, both sighted and
with visual disabilities,
were encouraged to touch
the art
Event 1 - Accessible Art at the Broad
● The event also featured a speech about accessibility in museums
by Michael Hudson, Director of the Resource Center for Persons
with Disabilities (RCPD) at MSU
Event 2 - Sense of Self
● November 2017, Broad Art
Museum
● Partnership with Exceptions
and the MSU RCPD
● Alisa Henriquez, professor in
the Department of Art, Art
History and Design
● In honor of Veterans Day, our
accessible art exhibition also
highlighted works that focus
on multisensory experiences
of war
Event 2 - Sense of Self
● Included excerpts that
literature students at MSU
selected from existing novels,
poems, and short stories
○ Students were tasked
with choosing an excerpt
that engaged audiences
in multisensory imagery
Event 2 - Sense of Self
● This event included all the
same accessibility features
as the first event, plus:
○ Audio recordings with
QR Codes of the literary
excerpts and original
poems
○ Video interviews of each
artist explaining their
work
Event 2 - Sense of Self
Dr. Georgina Kleege, a blind professor at the
University of California Berkeley, was the keynote
speaker for the event. Georgina Kleege is a creative
writer, literary scholar, and pioneer in disability studies.
Her work focuses on how blindness is represented in
art, how blindness affects the lives of artists, and how
museums can make visual art accessible to people
who are blind and visually impaired. During the
morning session of the event, she gave a talk entitled
“Blind Self-Portraits: Remaking the Image of
Blindness,” which focused on the work of artists with a
variety of visual disabilities.
Event 2 - Sense of Self
Lucas Livingston, the Assistant Director for
Accessibility, Lifelong Learning, and Public
Engagement for the Art Institute of Chicago,
also gave a talk, entitled “Accessibility as
Outreach: Tactile Art at the Art Institute of
Chicago.” During the talk, he explained the
efforts of the Art Institute and other museums
to increase the accessibility of the art by
using 3D printing to create models of the
exhibits that patrons can touch.