Making Exhibits Accessible

How cool is this? Blind students being able to touch and feel artifacts or facsimiles of relics. The University of Pennsylvania Museum is becoming an institution that works with the audience and includes many levels of interaction, not just a place to hold and store artifacts. They offer a specialty in Egyptian artifacts, that better help the students to understand the Egyptian peoples and their mortuary practices. Those in charge of the exhibitions make sure that the student wash their hands and use a light touch to feel the pieces. Although many people see this as dangerous to the preservation of objects, the staff at the museum do not feel that it is damaging and that the learning experience of those students who are blind weighs more than the stringent conservation of relic. Personally, I agree. What do you think?





Picture from: www.absurdintellectual.com
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Blind-Art-Penn-Museum-234239581.html