Human Interest: Verbal Description and Touch Tour
Jun 18, 2016
Visitors recreate the gesture portrayed in Annette Lemieux’s Left Right Left Right (1995), June 2016. Photograph by Olivia Horn
A group of visitors gathered in the sixth-floor galleries of Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection on June 27 for a Verbal Description and Touch Tour led by Whitney educator Pam Koehler. These tours, which are held at the Museum each month, allow visitors who are blind or have low vision to engage with works on view by listening to vivid verbal descriptions and interacting with tactile objects related to the works.
The tour explored the section of the exhibition titled Institutional Complex, which features works by artists including Annette Lemieux, Glenn Ligon, and Byron Kim. During the tour, participants discussed themes of institutional racism, identity politics, and protest, using language as a non-visual means of interacting with the work. Koehler encouraged visitors to experience some of the works physically by replicating the postures that they portray with their own bodies, such as the raised fist featured in Annette Lemieux’s Left Right Left Right (1995).
A visitor feels a replica of Glenn Ligon’s work, June 2016. Photograph by Olivia Horn
As Koehler described Ligon’s large-scale silkscreen self-portraits, the visitors were able to touch a replica of the work on which the outline of Ligon’s profile had been traced in hot glue, so that the contours of his face could be felt and visualized.
Educator Pam Koehler describes Byron Kim’s Synecdoche (1999-), June 2016. Photograph by Olivia Horn
Other touch objects were a bronze shoe—a reference to the gold-plated basketball shoes in Gary Simmons’s Lineup (1993), and a wood panel like those that comprise Byron Kim’s Synecdoche (1999-).
These works sparked dialogue about a range of topical contemporary issues. M’kina Tapscott, Coordinator of Access and Community Programs commented on the tour and the discourse that it generated, “I enjoy how this experience provides another avenue for all individuals to participate and engage with art and artists. In this unique and personal way, through verbal description, visitors have the opportunity to further extend the artwork through the power of their imagination and life experiences.”
Learn more about the Whitney’s Access Programs here.
By Olivia Horn, Interpretation Intern