Saki Matsuyama
Researcher, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

“Listening to someone else’s words as they appreciated the work of art was very interesting. Imagining what the work was like, and learning about how it looked to others or how they were touching it, different ways of seeing and experiencing it, was a lot of fun.”

“I was surprised that some of the materials and textures were completely different from those I had imagined while I could not see them. It was enjoyable to appreciate the works while being told things such as ‘Look, there’s a hole here’ by people who could not see (…) When I shared what I felt while looking at a work with a person who could not see, they told me ‘Hearing this, my impression when touching it changed’, and this also left an impression on me.”

These are reflections from people who participated in a workshop called “Art museums that only the hands know” held in September last year at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. In this workshop, sighted and blind people came together to appreciate three-dimensional works of art by touching them with their hands and engaging in dialogue, aiming to gain a deep sense of the attractions of these works by doing so. What kinds of realisations and discoveries are there when we try appreciating works of art by means other than sight; for example by touching, listening, or talking?

Getting a taste of works of art together, whether sighted or blind

In recent years, initiatives targeting people who find it hard to visit art museums, or who have never done so, have been spreading as part of education and outreach activities. These practices are rooted in the idea of bringing about a diverse and inclusive society. At our museum, we have been providing support to people with disabilities when they view our exhibitions since the 1990s. However, in 2017, we launched the Open the Senses – Project to Promote the Creation of New Art Appreciation Programmes with financial support from the Cultural Affairs Agency, and are working proactively to open up art museums to a broader range of people.

A series of workshops have been held as part of the Open the Senses Project, including activities in which participants touch three-dimensional or ceramic works with their hands to experience them, a programme in which participants experience the architecture of the museum through music and touch, walks around the neighbourhood on the topics of scent or music, and special classes in partnership between the museum and a school for the blind. In addition, we have created a Touch Collection introducing sketches and distinctive features of the works in our collection through raised diagrams and braille. These “touch appreciation tools” are primarily aimed at people with visual impairments.

Broadly speaking, the project emphasizes three points. The first is the use of bodily sensations such as touch or hearing when appreciating each work of art, in order to directly experience its size, shape, texture, weight, temperature, and so on. With three-dimensional and craft pieces, in particular, it is possible to obtain information which could not be known simply by looking, such as about the process of creation, the handprints of the artist, the materials, and so on, allowing us to experience the works more deeply.
The second point is always to appreciate the artworks through a dialogue between multiple people. Based on the premise that there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to appreciating works of art, the participants freely share what they felt from the pieces. By encountering new ways of looking or feeling from our own, we not only deepen our understanding of the works, but may also perhaps alter or broaden our own ways of thinking.
Finally, this project is aimed not only at people with visual impairments: we always work to ensure that sighted and blind people share experiences. By bringing people with different sensibilities and backgrounds together to attempt to enjoy art without relying on vision alone, we hope to go on creating universal ways of appreciating art which can be enjoyed by more people.

“Art museums that only the hands know” – workshops for touching, recounting,and imagining

I will introduce the fifth “Art museums that only the hands know” workshop held in September 2022, on Kyube/ Rokubei Kiyomizu, as one example. “Art museums that only the hands know” are workshops with the object of allowing participants to get a taste of works by making full use of the sensations of their hands, and are held once or twice a year. This workshop was held to coincide with the exhibition on Kyube/ Rokubei Kiyomizu (1922 – 2006) organized by our museum.

A group of four people, including those with visual impairments, and one curator carried out the activities on the day of the workshop. To begin with, everyone put on eye masks and checked aspects such as form and texture, while in the second half, they removed the eye masks and deepened their appreciation of the artwork further.
The piece which the participants appreciated was a ceramic receptacle for flowers (vase) around 30 centimetres tall. Although I have called it a receptacle for flowers, it is somewhat abstract in form, with several cuts made after the original form was created, and a representation made by stacking objects like plates divided into multiple parts. It is hard to grasp the overall form of the object just by touching it quickly, and you do not understand that it is a receptacle for flowers right away. For this very reason, I think that the participants took time to touch it, and enjoyed deepening their observation as they exchanged opinions with others.

The participants gathered around the work, alternating repeatedly between touching it and engaging in a dialogue about what it was made of, its overall form, and what it represented as they engaged with it. Some people talked about how they imagned a human body, saying “I can sense a roundness like that of a part of the body”, or “Perhaps it’s a figure wearing a kimono”, developing a richly imaginative world relying on their sense of touch. I also think that they were probably able to draw closer to the artist’s breathing and to the process of creation by touching the piece with their hands. In the second half, they removed their eye masks and continued to appreciate the work, with the sighted participants giving supplementary information about the colour or their impression of the shape as gained through sight. One of the groups even had an animated debate about concrete uses, such as “What kind of flowers do you think should be displayed in it?”, or “Do you think that the water goes in here?”.
After the workshop ended, the participants gave the following feedback, in addition to that introduced at the start of this article: “The more I touched it, the sharper my senses became and the better I understood it. That was interesting”; “It was fun because my impressions when I touched it changed completely when I saw it”; “Without this opportunity, I think that I would just have glanced quickly it, believing that I had seen it. By touching it, and ‘seeing’ it together with people with disabilities, I was able to experience a rich kind of ‘seeing’”. In these ways, I think that we can perhaps say that in addition to a deeper understanding of the work itself, it is an opportunity to encounter other people’s opinions and for our own values to be overhauled through the medium of the work.

The ABC Project, a partnership between artists, people who cannot see, and art museums

In addition to these appreciation workshops, a programme of new appreciation of works through a three-way partnership between Artists, Blind/ partially sighted people, and Curators of art museums is also underway as part of the Open the Senses Project.
This began in 2020, and is called the ABC Project from the initials of the participating groups. In the 2021 ABC Project, we held an appreciation programme about the potter Kanjiro Kawai (1890 – 1966) entitled “Listening with our eyes, seeing with our ears – Yuta Nakamura gropes around for Kanjiro Kawai”.
Kanjiro Kawai was born in Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture. He took over a kiln in Kyoto’s Gojozaka, set up independently, lived there in a dwelling which he designed himself, and continued to create until his death. The location is now open to the public as Kawai Kanjiro’s House. As well as pieces such as pots and vessels, after the war Kawai also engaged in literary activities, created works in irregular shapes and pieces with hands as a motif, and carved wooden masks and figures. The collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto contains more than 400 of Kawai’s works.

In this project, we experimented with having artists, visually impaired people, and the museum each interpret the space in which Kawai lived and his works and treasured items from their standpoints, in collaboration with Kawai Kanjiro’s House. For example, chairs, tables, and metal tobacco pipes designed by Kawai himself remain in his house. Contemporary artist Yuta Nakamura (A) and Rie Yasuhara (B) discussed Kawai’s awareness of creating form and his way of life as they experienced these objects by touching them. Based on these experiences, Nakamura went on to create nine ceramic works which could be appreciated by touching them.
In the latter part of the 1960s, Kawai also cut out newspaper articles on a daily basis. These show the broad range of his interests, from photographs of the coupling components of trains or parts of machine-made items to children’s poems, African art, or Buddha statues. In this project, we considered these newspaper clippings to be clues about the artist’s personality and way of life; we held a discussion between artists (A) and art museum staff (C), and made an audio recording of this.

On the basis of such research and study by the three parties, A, B, and C, we held an exhibition entitled “Educational studies 3: listening with our eyes, seeing with our ears – Yuta Nakamura gropes around for Kanjiro Kawai” in one corner of the museum’s Collection Gallery between March and May 2022. We posted four questions to Kanjiro Kawai in the venue, and displayed works and documents which served as hints to the answers. In the centre of the venue, we made a space where visitors could take off their shoes and sit on tatami mats, and provided the “works to be touched with the hands” made by Yuta Nakamura. We also played the audio recording made when touching and exploring the furniture and treasured items in the Kawai Kanjiro House. Visitors sat on the tatami mats and experienced touching the pieces at their leisure, or exchanging words with other people, each spending the time in their own way. I feel that it was surely an opportunity to get a sense of Kanjiro Kawai and the works of art by means of touching, listening, reading, and imagining (Figs 1,2) .

We also made an “ABC Collection Database vol. 2: listening to Kanjiro Kawai with our eyes, seeing with our ears” website to accompany this exhibition. The contents, which include the audio recording of touching and exploring the furniture and treasured items in the Kawai Kanjiro House and scenes from the discussion about the newspaper clippings, as well as recordings of the artist himself speaking, provide several entry points, allowing people to approach Kanjiro Kawai’s lifestyle and creation of works of art from the different perspectives of the three parties.

We are currently in the process of developing a new initiative, a programme in which the three ABC parties appreciate an abstract painting. I will avoid naming the work or the artist here, but although each individual shape in this oil painting made up of geometric patterns and irregular shapes is recognizable, it is unclear what the whole represents. Moreover, the interpretation can depend on the viewer, making it an extremely interesting piece. In what ways would you, the readers, like to try experiencing such an abstract painting without relying solely on sight? We are planning an experience-based exhibition in the Collection Gallery of the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, between October and December this year, and I hope that you will come along and enjoy the appreciation programme using your whole body.

Fig. 1“Listening with our eyes, seeing with our ears” exhibition (photographer: Nobutada Omote)

Fig. 2 Appreciating “works to be touched with the hands” made by Yuta Nakamura (photographer: Yuki Moriya)

Edited and published by the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities.

Published on July 25th, 2023.