Please, do Touch!

Gotland has initiated an art project "Please, do touch!" The art exhibition will open for the tactile values and will reach groups of people that today are more or less excluded from the art life. The exhibition is inviting all persons that can be affected by touching art, irrespective of being handicapped.

Usually visitors are expected not to touch the works. We wish to demonstrate that it could be different. The process of arranging the exhibition should give good tools, ideas and training for the institutions concerned. They can get along with in their work to make the art accessible for everyone. The focus will be put on the tactile values in an alternative sort of exhibition - it is true that some of the pieces of art will become more worn and maybe even be used as consumer goods, but this will also give a higher degree of cultural communication.

The selected art works will represent various forms of texture and expressions, wood, stone, plastic, rubber and other materials. It can also include experiments, for example works that have physical shape, sound, smells and interactive expressions. To make it easier for visitors to get orientated in the exhibition hall, it will be equipped with pedagogical tools, for example, the catalogues printed with Braille text and/or recorded speech, etc.

The visitors will also be welcome to the museum workshop and be given the opportunity to make their own work, based on their impulses from the exhibition. From this workshop a growing and multiplex second part of the exhibition will emerge.

The exhibition will be opened at the Museum of Art on Gotland in January 2004. Thereafter it will be offered to other art galleries and museums. The experiences and new knowledge resulting from the whole process of this project will be presented in the catalogue and the exhibition itself. Here we will be able to certify that it is possible to implement an increased accessibility that will be - after fulfillment - of decisive guidance for the future work.

The project was initiated by the Municipal Art Consultant on Gotland and arranged by the Municipality of Gotland in close cooperation with the associations of the disabled and the Museum of Art on Gotland. It is financed with grants from the Council of Cultural Affairs of the Swedish Government, the public fund (Allmanna arvsfonden) and the European Commission. The associations of the disabled are involved in the project from its start. The exhibition, its design and pedagogy are designed in consultation with them.