Everyone knows in a museum, you can look as much as you want but never touch, let alone taste or sniff the artwork. But soon at the Meadows Museum you’ll be able to do just that.

SMU’s Meadows Museum has joined only a handful of others in the country in a fight for accessibility for all museumgoers. New programs and initiatives allow the visually impaired to experience and enjoy the artwork just as any other guest would.

Meadows’ extensive collection of Spanish art is being modified to include multi-sensory tools.

First, volunteers trained to work with the visually impaired will describe a work out loud. A thorough description can help give context and details to an image.

Paintings are recreated on 3-dimensional paper for guests to be able to “see” them and come up with an image in their mind’s eye by feeling a painting’s shape.

Other items included in the paintings, like a pipe, umbrella or hat, are given to guests so that they can feel the shape of the objects present in the image.

Little vials of scents are also used like pomegranate from one painting or tobacco smoke from another.

Some sculptures have been approved for guests to touch and feel while wearing special gloves. In the future, exhibits may include music or food as well with the goal of engaging all 5 senses.

The accessibility program also hosts community events for the visually impaired.
Each Thursday night, the museum is open late for guided multisensory tours.

One weekend, a blind artist led a painting workshop using guide dogs as models. Community members pet and felt the pets’ heads and faces, then recreated them on paper with brilliant colors.

Director of Accessibility for Meadows Carmen Smith wants to be clear that these programs aren’t just for the visually impaired. Rather, she knows they will enhance all guests’ experiences with the paintings.

Rather than giving a work a passing glance, guests can exchange thoughts, feelings and theories about the work and experience the subject as though it were in the room.

“So many times, the visually impaired guests and I will be having a discussion about a work, and they’ll be lit up, so engaged, about a work they can’t even see,” said Smith.

Student volunteers get trained to lead the visually impaired guests through the museum and to describe works of art to them.

“We even put on blindfolds and were led around ourselves,” said Amelia Dracup, student volunteer and SMU junior.

Senior Katie Bridges, who works with Smith in planning student volunteering, hopes to get more students on board with the accessibility initiative.

“We’re opening up a new world to them,” said Smith. “It’s a world they never thought they could be a part of.”