It is so easy for people to take the way they see the world for granted. This fact is even more painfully obvious when the subject is sight and blindness. Human beings are so heavily sight-centric that we’ll pay more for a room with a view and spend hours staring at video games. Thus, blind friends or family members probably don’t enjoy a number of activities that their seeing-able friends do enjoy.

At least one business is attempting to bridge the experience gap between the blind and seeing-abled. Dans Le Noir? is a restaurant where participants eat their meals completely in the dark. This must surely be a fun one-time experiment. Blind individuals can share their world with their friends, and seeing-able friends can appreciate smell, taste, and the complexity of conversation without sight. However independently, sighted individuals would get increasingly frustrated with this set up. Why should they have to temporarily disable themselves to have an experience? Blind individuals would get bored fast, after all, this is how they live life everyday.

After pointing all this out, the last place people would think to have a fun time with their blind friends is a at a museum, especially an art museum. Even in museums where there are hands-on and audio exhibits, most exhibitions are 80% to 90% visual, and museums are notorious for having a “no touch policy.”

Still, with imagination and smart implementation, both the seeing-able and the blind can “come as they are” and enjoy enriching experiences together. Here are just a couple of ideas:

Touch Exhibit – forget the untouchable artifacts and artworks in regular exhibits. Why not create an exhibition that is 100% touchable? With industrial design quality 3D scanners, original works can be recreated with both proportional and textural-surface accuracy. Two-dimensional designs can also be enhanced texturally. Having the entire exhibition in one or two colors would also make it visually intriguing, and more importantly, would invite the seeing-able to explore with their hands as well.

A Whole New Meaning to “Tableau Vivant” – this idea could be a bit risqué like eating sushi off of nude models, but could also provide immense amounts of fun and insight. Imagine putting together the scenes, people, furniture, and even animals that make up some the most famous paintings. Then invite guests to enter the paintings and…touch! Imagine being able to feel the swirling, frightful room in Vincent Van Gough’s The Night Café, or, absorbing the solitude of Picasso’s blue subject in The Absinthe Drinker? Who knows, maybe such an activity will encourage blind and seeing individuals to create some living art of their own!

Surely there are many more ideas to be had. How would you use scents or sound? What fun ideas do you have?

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