Body of knowledge
Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and the blind imagination
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4364504 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Clare Deal (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 156-169 |
| Publication date | 2020-05-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Senses and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1745-8927 • E-ISSN: 1745-8935 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17458927.2020.1763036 |
| OpenAlex | W3040595886 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 14 |
This article examines the cultural and philosophical intersection between visual and tactile knowledge and the emergent aesthetics of modernism. In the September 1913 edition of The Museums Journal, J. A. Charlton Deas published a paper entitled “The Showing of Museums and Art Galleries to the Blind.” The text, exceptional in its historical context, complicated prevailing assumptions about acts of “visual” art and blindness. Deas details a series of experiments undertaken at Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery from 1906 to 1913 that consisted of making accessible exhibits, specimens and paintings for blind children to touch. Unprecedented at the time, these experiments recast the persistent Western belief that the eye has privileged access to knowledge, instead asserting that knowledge is embedded within material corporeality. The physical, creative and intellectual inclusion of blind people into the formerly inaccessible space of the museum was unique in its reach and offers a refreshing new perspective of what those (authoritatively visual) spaces could be. Sunderland, a region which tends to be discursively separated from the ambitions and experiments of modernism, was at the center of modernist discussions about knowledge, sight and touch; and, disrupts modernism’s silence with respect to acknowledging unprecedented regional developments such as those detailed in “Showing
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Blindness · Context (archaeology · Modernism (music · Painting · Sight · Silence · Sociology · Visual arts · Historical Art and Culture Studies · History · Philosophy · Photography and Visual Culture · Visual Culture and Art Theory
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,25 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |