"Seeing Beyond Sight illuminates the surprising power and creative potential of photography in an astonishing collection of images created by visually impaired teens"--P. [4] of cover.

This ground-breaking volume explores the experiential, psychological, and metaphorical implications of blindness and invisibility in recent American art, offering new insight into contemporary artistic practice. Featuring sculptural, sound-based, and language-based artworks, this fascinating volume explores the experiential, psychological, and metaphorical implications of blindness and invisibility in recent American art. New research addresses the paradox of why and how numerous sighted and unsighted artists, normally considered to be 'visual artists' such as William Anastasi, Robert Morris, Joseph Grigely and Lorna Simpson, have challenged the primacy of vision as a bearer of perceptual authority. Their work explores what resides on the other side of the visual field, prompting audiences to reflect upon the significance of what we cannot see, whether by choice, habit or physiological limitations, in the world around us. In so doing, they point to ways of knowing beyond what can be observed with the eyes, as well as to the invisible forces (societal, political, cultural) that govern our own frameworks of experience.

Recent research in the cognitive sciences gives us a new perspective on the cognitive and sensory landscape. In The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space,museum expert Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School bring together scholars and museum practitioners from around the world to highlight new trends and untapped opportunities for using such modalities as scent, sound, and touch in museums to offer more immersive experiences and diverse sensory engagement for visually- and otherwise-impaired patrons. Visitor studies describe how different personal and group identities color our cultural consumption and might serve as a compass on museum journeys. Psychologists and educators look at the creation of memories through different types of sensory engagement with objects, and how these memories in turn affect our next cultural experience. An anthropological perspective on the history of our multisensory engagement with ritual and art objects, especially in cultures that did not privilege sight over other senses, allows us a glimpse of what museums might become in the future. Education researchers discover museums as unique educational playgrounds that allow for a variety of learning styles, active and passive exploration, and participatory learning. Designers and architects suggest a framework for thinking about design solutions for a museum environment that invites an intuitive, multisensory and flexible exploration, as well as minimizes physical hurdles. While attention has been paid to accessibility for the physically-impaired since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, making buildings accessible is only the first small step in elevating museums to be centers of learning and culture for all members of their communities. This landmark book will help all museums go much further.

Beyond Sight, edited by Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal, explores the ways in which Iberian writers crafted images of both Old and New Worlds using the non-visual senses (hearing, smell, taste, and touch). The contributors argue that the uses of these senses are central to understanding Iberian authors and thinkers from the pre- and early modern periods. Medievalists delve into the poetic interiorizations of the sensorial plane to show how sacramental and purportedly miraculous sensory experiences were central to the effort of affirming faith and understanding indigenous peoples in the Americas. Renaissance and early modernist essays shed new light on experiences of pungent, bustling ports and city centres, and the exotic musical performances of empire. This insightful collection covers a wide array of approaches including literary and cultural history, philosophical aesthetics, affective and cognitive studies, and theories of embodiment. Beyond Sight expands the field of sensory studies to focus on the Iberian Peninsula and its colonies from historical, literary, and cultural perspectives.

Blind Visitor Experiences at Art Museums seeks to answer two questions: Given the guiding principle of visual art being understood only by sight, what do people understand when sight is diminished or not there? Moreover, given the experience of blindness, what are the effects of vision loss or no vision on a cultural identity in art? It does this by exploring seven in-depth case studies of visitors to the education department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the experiences of leading groups by two teachers. In addition, this book includes findings from participant observations in classes and touch tours for blind and visually impaired people at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After reading this book, readers will understand both passive and active social exclusion from the museum’s facilities (active exclusion is defined as a deliberate act of exclusion based on the belief that blind people are incapable of understanding visual art, whereas passive exclusion is defined as exclusion resulting from an aspect of miseducation, such as inappropriate building design or learning materials, or a lack of training, knowledge, resources, access materials or buildings).

Art/Museums takes the study of international relations to the art museum. It seeks to persuade those who study international relations to take art/museums seriously and museum studies to take up the insights of international relations. And it does so at a time when both international relations and art are said to be at an end-that is, out of control and beyond sight of their usual constituencies. The book focuses on the British Museum, the National Gallery of London, the Museum of Iraq, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Getty museums, the Guggenheim museums, and "museum" spaces instantly created by the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. The art includes works over which museums might struggle, acquire through questionable means, hoard and possibly lose, such as the Parthenon sculptures, Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks, the ancient art of Babylon, modern art, and the art/museum itself in an era of rapid museum expansion. Bringing art, museums, and international relations together draws on the art technique of collage, which combines disparate objects, themes, and time periods in one work to juxtapose unexpected elements, leaving the viewer to relate objects that are not where they are expected to be.

Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.

A powerful reminder to anyone who thinks design is primarily a visual pursuit, The Senses accompanies a major exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum that explores how space, materials, sound, and light affect the mind and body. Learn how contemporary designers, including Petra Blaisse, Bruce Mau, Malin+Goetz and many others, engage sensory experience. Multisensory design can solve problems and enhance life for everyone, including those with sensory disabilities. Featuring thematic essays on topics ranging from design for the table to tactile graphics, tactile sound, and visualizing the senses, this book is a call to action for multisensory design practice. The Senses: Design Beyond Vision is mandatory reading for students and professionals working in diverse fields, including products, interiors, graphics, interaction, sound, animation, and data visualization, or anyone seeking the widest possible understanding of design. The book, designed by David Genco with Ellen Lupton, is edited by Lupton and curator Andrea Lipps. Includes essays by Lupton, Lipps, Christopher Brosius, Hansel Bauman, Karen Kraskow, Binglei Yan, and Simon Kinnear.

This second edition of Reaching and Teaching Students with Special Needs Through Art is written for art educators, special educators, and those who value the arts for students with special needs. It builds on teachers’ positive responses to the first edition, and now combines over 700 years of the educational experience of arts and special educators who share their art lessons, behavior management strategies, and classroom stories. The revised second edition provides updated chapters addressing students with emotional/behavioral disabilities, learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, and visual and hearing impairments. The newly revised second edition includes chapters on students with autism spectrum disorder, preschool students, and students experiencing trauma. All chapters have been updated to include current definitions and language, recommended teaching strategies, art lesson adaptations, behavior management strategies, and references to related chapters. Follow-up activities are provided for further insights into each group of students. A new summary chapter connects how the authors’ collaborations resulted in changes to two professional organizations. Since the first edition, many of the featured authors established the new Division of Visual and Performing Arts Education (DARTS) at the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC) and earlier, formed a new National Art Education Association (NAEA) Interest group—Special Needs in Art Education (SNAE), now Arts in Special Education (ASE). This edition is ideal for preservice arts methods courses and education courses on accessibility and inclusion at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It continues to offer current yet proven best practices for reaching and teaching this ever-important population of students through the arts.