Kyungmin Kate LeeTranscendence II (Self-Rewriting), installation view, Clark Centre for the Arts, Scarborough, 2025.
Photo: courtesy of the artist

Decelerating Museological Experience Through Touch

Matthew Ryan Smith

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Exhibition spaces are overwhelmingly structured toward sighted audiences and condition an ableist experience of art. The architectural design and curatorial programming of museums and galleries do not exist in a vacuum but are instead an extension of a larger society that privileges sight in a rigid hierarchy of senses. Not only does this perpetuate crucial barriers to entry for Blind and low‑vision audiences, which stymie active social participation and independence, but it also works against the need for critical accessibility that most cultural institutions hold as a core value.¹ 1 - Whereas critical disability theory emphasizes how disability is primarily constructed through social dynamics, critical accessibility theory frames access as an ethical question, investigating how institutions condition and structure barriers to entry.

Toronto-based artist Kyungmin Kate Lee and Cambridge-based artist Olivia Brouwer have produced radical bodies of work that unsettle ocularcentrism in museums and galleries. They speak knowingly about the exigent demand for accessibility by Blind and low-vision audiences, and they detail how aesthetics, programming, and design can integrate tangible strategies for accommodation. In questioning the kinds of ableism embedded within cultural institutions, they reconfigure curatorial paradigms and generate important conversations about crip rights, disability, and social marginalization. Both decelerate the museological experience of time and duration by emphasizing the urgency of touch, thus positioning slowness as a neglected yet critical mode of understanding. By foregrounding embodied intimacy, they suggest alternative frameworks for multisensory communication and, in doing so, open up new spaces for imagining more inclusive futures.

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