Opening of the tactile exposition "Touch and See" for blind and visually impaired visitors at the Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts

The Kaluga Museum of Fine Arts (104 Lenina St.) will host the opening of the first tactile museum exposition in Kaluga for visually impaired visitors.

For many years of its existence, the museum has been actively engaged in exhibition and educational activities, taking into account the needs and interests of various categories of visitors, including persons with disabilities. Measures have been taken to increase the accessibility of the museum for certain categories of disabled people. In particular, the equipment of the halls with induction loops and the offer of guided tours in sign language are intended for the hearing impaired. Special lifts help people with musculoskeletal disabilities to climb the 2nd floors of museum buildings.

Until 2020, the museum space for visually impaired visitors remained almost unadapted. The museum buildings were equipped only with braille plaques with information about the museum’s opening hours. This is clearly not enough to familiarize this category of visitors with the museum and its collection.

The opening of the tactile exposition for the blind and visually impaired "Touch and See" involves the placement of tactile models of exhibits in the halls on a permanent basis. Tactile models of paintings and sculptures are created taking into account the accessibility of perception by visually impaired or blind people with the help of touch. Their format is different - icons are made using contour graphics, paintings - in the form of a volumetric relief, sculptures - in the form of volumetric reduced copies. The models are made of wood and special plastic in the studio of tactile models of Mikhail and Olga Shu (Moscow), which cooperates with many of the largest museums in Russia.

In 2020, thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Kaluga Region, the museum took important steps towards creating a full-fledged tactile exposition. The first 3 tactile exhibits were made for the exhibition from the funds of the KMII "Path to Victory". Now the masterpieces of the permanent exhibition have found their tactile copies. This is a painting by Nikolai Yaroshenko "A student of the student", a wooden sculpture "Nikola Mozhaisky" and a painting by an unknown Italian artist of the 16th century. "Madonna with the Goldfinch". Today the museum has 9 tactile models of its exhibits, 6 of them will be placed in the halls. In the future, the number of tactile models of museum exhibits will increase.

Each visually impaired visitor will have the opportunity to get a tactile acquaintance with works of art both with the help of specially trained employees of the museum’s educational service, and independently. Hands will be able to “examine” the masterpiece by touch, as well as get a detailed description of the details, information about the author, technique, composition and plot of the work. For this purpose, each tactile exhibit is equipped with an information label printed in braille.

The creation of the first in Kaluga museum tactile exposition "Touch and See" will significantly expand the opportunities for blind visitors to get acquainted with works of art in an accessible format, will contribute to their sociocultural adaptation and the implementation of the constitutional right to equal access to cultural values.