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New Sensory Experiences in Museums
A Museum Works with Schools to Achieve Barrier-Free Accessibility
Eleven-year-old David from the Federal Institute for the Blind (Bundes-Blindenerziehungsinstitut, BBI) in Vienna relates that he “ate fruit in front of the fruit picture”.
Vicky, another pupil at the BBI, is delighted that she was permitted to go very close to the art works. How was it possible for 10-to-14-year-old pupils from two classes at the BBI and the GRG 23/VBS Draschestraße secondary school to sit on the floor and eat fruit in front of paintings at the Belvedere? The schools participated in an inclusive school project offered by the museum, aimed at enabling visually impaired young people, for whom most museums have no targeted programmes, to experience the Belvedere art collection. The visually impaired art teacher Michaela Mallinger was closely involved in the concept preparation and implementation. Unlike the already existing “AndersSehen” (SeeingDifferently) tours for the visually impaired, the project employs multisensuality in theory and in practice to meet the pupils’ needs and let them experience the museum in very specific, finely differentiated ways, while at the same time training their tactile, auditory and visual perception. A central aspect of the underlying concept is the interdisciplinary approach, which takes the diversity of individual learning abilities and interests into account.
In the preparation phase of the project, the art educators worked with the children at school using an “art box”, which contained such things as ground plans of the baroque palace on tactile sheets, materials aimed at providing a better understanding of the oil paintings, and even pieces of the materials out of which Belvedere Palace was built. “The ladies made us really curious to find out more,” says David, and Vicky adds that for her, being able to touch things makes a visit to a museum much more interesting.
The project was conceived so as to address all the senses, and this involved working with different materials. “A particular highlight, in our opinion, was the workshops in which the children could touch, hear, eat and smell materials related to selected paintings in order to give them a new ‘seeing experience’,” explains Roswitha Bittner, project director at the Belvedere.
In the workshops, the children created their own interpretations of the objects: specific object descriptions, wooden frames with mosaics, sculptures out of clay, plaster and plasticine, text collages with music samples and listening sequences, and two-to-five-minute audio profiles. The crafts work was supervised by Felicitas Dornstauner-Eckmann of the BBI. Finally, the children also created audio guides about the Belvedere, its history and the artworks in its collection.
“Everything was explained very well. I was completely satisfied,” says David. He adds: “We may go to the museum with our school class again. Not privately. Although – actually, that might not be so bad.” The Belvedere is already planning other barrier-free projects.
The pilot project “Belvedere Hautnah” (“Belvedere Up Close”) took place in the context of the initiative “Cultural Education with Schools at Austrian Federal Museums”, which is being funded by the Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture, with KKA providing advice and support. Information about permanent programmes resulting from the pilot project will be provided online, at an information meeting for teachers at the Belvedere, and Austria-wide via e-mail in the context of the “Wien-Aktion” (“Vienna Initiative”).
