Augmenting Interactions
Access Barriers to Digital Screens in Museums View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Raul Leiva Olmo
Museums are public spaces that must guarantee access to their content to as many people as possible. For this reason, museums must consider all the difficulties their visitors may encounter when accessing their galleries and the exhibitions within them. Many areas of study in the museum sector have been applying what is known as the Social Model of Disability in their approach for some years, but professionals who work in the design of exhibitions are often excluded from this conversation. This means that the accessibility aspects applied to the design of exhibitions in museums are often the same applied by designers to other sectors, and they are usually based on the Medical Model of Disability. By highlighting the nature of access barriers and how they are experienced by visitors, this research aims to help professionals involved in the design of exhibitions empathize with the problems that visitors can face accessing digital screens and, therefore, provide solutions to mitigate their effects. This research project involves developing a toolkit that facilitates access to this topic for designers working on digital screens for the museum sector.
Museum in the Field: Art, Food, Community
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alison Williams, Sarah Hirsch, Deborah Harris
Growing networks of artists, arts-based interdisciplinary researchers, and social justice organizers are exploring how creative practices may help to shape sustainable food systems in farming communities across the world. As curatorial spaces that have been created for knowledge production, these farming communities might be seen as living museums, presenting vistas of possibilities as well as archiving practices, seeds, stories, landscapes. This paper examines advocacy from arts-based practitioners to create communities and visions for sustainable (food) futures, acknowledging also the ways in which collaboration with any social group must recognize the integrity and needs of those particular communities and the traditions and knowledge they seek to preserve and vitalize. Communication strategies that engage the use of social justice rhetoric including collective decision-making, negotiation, facilitation and mediation place the inhabitants at the center of the curation of these living museums, identifying them as “subjects of action and not as objects of intervention."
Featured Labeless Labels: Case Studies at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chiara Ianeselli
This paper’s research area is situated in the framework of commitment to rethink the ethics of representations various institutions have undertaken for what concerns labels and the policies of labels making. The role of labels indeed, has changed over the last decades, and from being apparently objective, “matter of fact” data, they have gained a wide range of functions and now they can be considered interpretative, reflective tools aimed at providing a more in-depth analysis on a variety of subjects, from provenance to artists’ insights, to contextualization. Institutions have also launched several initiatives led at diversifying exhibitions, reaching broader audiences, and removing cultural biases from their programming: labels in some cases reflect these major changes. This paper presents the current status of labels at the Gemäldegalerie, the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Hamburger Bahnhof, and reflects the current trends being explored, also by comparing these cases with recent debates around titling issues arose for example at the Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden, also in Germany. The text reflects upon the urgency of developing critical tools to analyze how and what stories are presented in cultural institutions. In particular the aim is to analyze the current status of reflection on this topic and to bring further attention on labels as mediation tools between the context(s) and the object. In place of their legacy as solely informing, if not instructional tools, labels should take on a new role as discussion forums for sparking debate and for honouring unseen experiences, also to enhance accessibility.
Power of Interconnectivity: Case Study of Social Inclusion and Community-based Partnership in Reggio Emilia, Italia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alessandra Landini, Marisa Macy
Pathways for community engagement are formed when we slow down for flanerie and create meaningful connections. French poet Boudelaire described flanerie as a state of being where one goes around and discovers. Professor Alessandra Landini from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia helps us discover meaningful connections when a public space like a museum collaborates with their neighborhood school. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Landini and her school community relocated to the town public Museum’s Palace, in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her community partnership sustained the education program. Everything like food and resources followed her and children. The pandemic is over, but partnership between museum and school remains. In the tradition of the atelier, artistic and cultural expression in childhood is enhanced when professionals have resources. Entities outside of Reggio Emilia schools support early childhood education in this region of Italy. Many community-based programs exist in Emilia-Romagna that have meaningful contributions for professionals working with young children. It is nearly impossible to separate education from the community context in Reggio Emilia when wondering if you can bottle up this magic. When you come to Reggio Emilia it is only natural to wonder how you can take some of this magic home with you. Erica Jong wrote, “What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human.” Our session will share the charm of interconnectivity in an Italian community-based setting. Flanerie!
