A touch of museum to scale. The collaborative development of accessible art experiences

The action research project “A touch of Museum to Scale” aims to enhance the accessibility of the art collection Museum to Scale, exhibited at the University of Antwerp. In collaboration with a variety of stakeholders – art experts, researchers, access providers, users-by-experience, artists with and without a disability and students – the University’s OPEN Expertise Centre and Culture Department Rubi, are prototyping objects for tactile exploration and an inclusive art guide for five artworks that can be listened to, that can be read, in Flemish sign language, English and Dutch. Against the backdrop of a universalist account of accessibility the project aims to: (a) involve users with varying abilities in access creation and academic exploration; (b) explore universal access services that are not focused on one specific target group; (c) experiment with intersensory translation as a means to create universally accessible art experiences (d) discover how we can bring accessibility and artistic creation closer together. Through a series of consecutive practice-based and academic actions with various stakeholders – research, creation, reflection, focus groups, workshops, questionnaires – the project has gradually been developing. The guide, for instance, skillfully combines visual descriptions and information, enjoyable by sighted and non-sighted visitors together. A sound artist with a visual impairment developed soundscapes for two artworks. One of the tactile objects is being created by a visually impaired artist, resulting in an artistic and tactile translation of an original, as well as an artwork in its own right that can be explored with and without sight. Finally, the team is exploring ways in which to artistically integrate subtitling and sign language translation. In this presentation, the project is a starting point to reflect on: (a) the role of translation in the creation of what Neves (2020) calls “Achievement Spaces”; (b) the concept of “access clusters” (Roofthooft 2021) to offer audiences of all abilities choices in how to experience art; (c) the relation of such “access clusters” to the concept of universal design; (d) the role of intersensory translation for inclusive art experiences; (e )the ways in which artistic approaches to access can enrich the “Achievement Space” or the “Access cluster” in art exhibitions.