We tested an exhibition blindfolded, in Rouen, to discover with your hands
By Fabien Massin
Published on
An exhibition in a museum where you can touch the works! Here is what the Museum of Fine Arts of Rouen (Seine-Maritime), with “Art and matter, please touch”, an exhibition to discover… blindfolded. We tested the experience, and it is certainly fun and interesting!
Masks ready at the entrance
At the entrance to the exhibition, audio guides and masks are available. I put on the mask, my steps are hesitant from the start, without sight the balance is uncertain, but my colleague Mathieu is there to guide me. Moreover, coming together is essential to take full advantage of this tactile exhibition.
We approach the first sculpture. No worries about touching the works, they are reproductions of ancient, medieval, classical masterpieces… Guided by my colleague, I reach out with my hand and touch a cold material, which at first seems mysterious and elusive… before I stumble over what is unquestionably a nose: we are therefore in the presence of a human figure. Then I identify a chin, ears, hair… Mathieu informs me, he who sees the explanatory panels, it is a reproduction of The Head of Eloquenceby Émile-Antoine Bourdelle, a work dating from the beginning of the XXand century.
Growths, curves, reliefs…
My guide gives me the geographical instructions to examine the following works: “Turn to the right, move forward a little, move your hand, there you go, a little more to the left, there you are. Every time I touch a sculpture, the questions arise: what am I dealing with, and how do I go about identifying the contours? Is it an arm, a stomach, a Roman toga that I’m touching now? Is it a man or a woman who is represented? I grope… ah a new nose, them protruding from the face, giving them a clue that I can easily detect.
Some works are manageable and can be turned over, it’s practical to discover them in their entirety. Ah, here the head is flat, strange, unless it’s a hat. There, further, the forms are curved, it would seem that we are there at the bottom of a bare back. “It is a statue called The Chilly, it is by Jean-Antoine Houdon », informs me my colleague. Other times we are offered the opportunity to discover not works, but materials and their characteristics (relief, smooth, rough), tools or even smells related to the work of the sculptor (cut stone, modeled earth).
After a half-hour blind visit, I take off my mask… and discover my environment in a completely different way. I go around the works, and make a link between my tactile memories and what now appears to my eyes. And there are a few surprises…
“Art and matter, priority of touch is an exhibition designed by the Fabre museum in Montpellier in partnership with the Louvre museum, presents the Meeting of Metropolitan Museums (RMM) of Rouen. The result of exceptional cooperation with people with visual disabilities, the exhibition draws on their sensory experience of sculpture to invent new mediation practices intended for all audiences. »
The intention of this presentation is to show how the experience of touch offers a variety of sensations that enriches the understanding of the works and reveals them in all their dimension and their smallest details.
Practical information :
Art and matter, please touch, from March 26 to September 18, 2022, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Rouen, esplanade Marcel-Duchamp.
Exhibition open every day (except Tuesday) from 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.
Free admission.
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