Photo by Bruce Tom. This article was written on special assignment for the Art Beat blog through the TeenTix Press Corps, a teen arts journalism program run by TeenTix, a youth empowerment and arts access nonprofit organization. Read their other Art Beat articles here.
By TeenTix Newsroom Writer Pearl Fields
Please Touch: Together, Breaking Barriers is an innovative, tactile art exhibit that enables blind and low-vision people to enjoy art alongside sighted people. The creative exhibition accomplishes this goal by encouraging visitors to touch the art in addition to admiring it. Although its focus is to increase accessibility for disabled people, this exhibit is open to everyone. The exhibit has been up and running for ten years in various locations across Seattle, and is currently located on the third floor of King Street Station. In this space, it will be available to visitors until January 4, 2025. It’s a worthwhile visit because of its unique location and its free admission, which makes it financially accessible as well.
Braille brochures and disposable gloves (not required, but encouraged when touching the art) are laid out on a table at the exhibit’s entrance. Off to the left is hand sanitizer. Each artwork includes a title in braille and English, allowing braille readers to understand the artwork without assistance alongside sighted individuals. Each description also includes a QR code that brings guests to an audio account of what each artwork is and what it looks like.
Works including complicated metal and wooden sculptures, wire structures, and stone carvings in a variety of sizes, textures, weights, and shapes, make the tactile experience tremendously varied and rewarding. Experiencing art through touch was a first for me because it allowed me to use my hands to understand the art, essentially shaping it in my mind. I have never been allowed to do that in any other art gallery! And although I felt like I was breaking long-enforced rules, I think maybe that is exactly the point.
Barbara Oswald has been the curator of the Please Touch exhibit for many years, and is also the founder of ReVision Arts, an organization whose mission statement is to “focus on artists with all types of disabling conditions and others who consider themselves underrepresented.” During our recent interview, Oswald expressed, “I really believe we have five senses… and that art needs to be experienced with more than one sense.” She went on to say, “For some folks with visual challenges, if they can’t touch the art, how are they going to know what it is?” Please Touch at ARTS at King Street Station keeps Oswald’s perspective in mind, as its current location showcases the tactile art with the goal of reaching a new audience.
It aims to inspire more people to think about accessibility, hopefully spurring a collective movement “towards a more accessible world,” says Jessica Carbaugh, a co-curator of the show. She also says that the main goal of this new venue “is to have [the exhibit] reach the people that are not at all involved, so people that aren’t necessarily in the arts world, or people that aren’t necessarily advocates for accessibility.” Carbaugh is the manager at A/NT Gallery, a non-jury gallery located within Seattle Center. The gallery’s mission is to “provide visual artists at all levels of experience, the opportunity to show and market their work.” The A/NT Gallery has displayed this tactile Please Touch exhibit for six of the ten years it has been running.
Carbaugh is interested to see how this exhibit broadens young artists’ views of art they can make, perhaps inspiring some of them to create tactile art. Carbaugh says that a common misconception about making art accessible is thinking, “If I’m not disabled then it’s not about me,” when really, increasing accessibility aims to bring all people together. “That’s why not only was all of our work tactilely interesting, it also had to be visually appealing.”
Carbaugh also brought some of the artists featured in the Please Touch A/NT Gallery over to King Street Station. She stated it challenged these artists to “think of their work differently [and consider] what can I do to make my work tactile?” Her work as co-curator of the exhibit at ARTS at King Street Station meant she helped decide which pieces were going to be displayed. This exhibit features 37 artworks that can be experienced by touch, and three of these (on a table towards the back of the room) are encouraged to be picked up entirely! Consider the fact that you will likely not come across an exhibit as tactilely diverse as this one again. If you might regret missing this opportunity, I urge you to make the time and visit the exhibit! And when you do, please, please, let go of your hesitations and touch the art!
