{"id":275833,"date":"2026-05-01T16:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/compte-rendu\/emthe-agency-of-access-contemporary-disability-art-institutional-critique-em\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T09:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:53:16","slug":"the-agency-of-access-contemporary-disability-art-institutional-critique","status":"publish","type":"compte-rendu","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/reviews\/the-agency-of-access-contemporary-disability-art-institutional-critique\/","title":{"rendered":"The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art & Institutional Critique<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In her book The Agency of Access: Contemporary Disability Art & Institutional Critique<\/em>, Amanda Cachia writes about contemporary disabled artists and curators and their approach to expanding the conversation around contemporary art. Cachia posits that \u201cdisabled embodiment\u201d is a conduit to new vectors of sense and sensory experiences, much like synesthesia. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
By showcasing works by disabled artists who are antagonistic (to the general public and the institution, among others), she demonstrates how they plunge audiences into the depths of deafness, blindness, sight, mobility, autism, and other disability topoi. The desultory ways that museums have typically approached contemporary disability art\u200a\u2014\u200aas well as museum professionals in general\u200a\u2014\u200ado not grasp it as the heir to and creative extension of earlier movements and artists. Cachia then proceeds to trace its genealogies in art history, disability studies, and history, interweaving them into a concise and captivating read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Museum visitors are led to believe that all exhibition apparatuses, such as wall texts and lists of artists, are natural in form and appearance. It is therefore interesting to look at audio descriptions, captions, and tactile details in the same light. Carmen Papalia is highlighted here with his work See for Yourself <\/em>(2015), a mise en abyme <\/em>whereby the layering of descriptions is the artwork. Papalia draws attention to museums\u2019 restricted attempts at translation and communication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In The Agency of Access<\/em>, Cachia takes on the dominant but mostly unquestioned ocularcentrism that is exemplified by the writer and art critic John Berger\u2019s book Ways of Seeing <\/em>(1972). Her critique grows out of the seminal book about disability art Re-Presenting Disability: Activism and Agency in the Museum <\/em>(2010), edited by the scholars Richard Sandell, Jocelyn Dodd, and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, whose contributors identify and present ableism within the arts sector. Cachia moves away from ocularcentrism by identifying the necessarily synesthetic nature of disability art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The limitations of The Agency of Access<\/em> lie in Cachia\u2019s exclusive use of Anglo-Saxon scholarship and art. Although she mentions the innovative practices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian, she does not discuss the specific steps that these institutions have taken to display and curate works or analyze the alignment between their strategic goals and their methods. She discusses a wealth of exhibitions organized by curators such as Jessica Cooley, Ann Fox, and Iarlaith N\u00ed Fheorais, but readers are sadly left wanting to know more about their curatorial methods and what \u201ccrip curation\u201d is all about. Where Cachia excels is in defining the role of \u201cdisabled artist as curator\u201d to replace the traditional curator as gatekeeper for visitors\u2019 navigation of the museum experience. She reveals at once the narrow perspectives within museums as institutions and, perhaps more importantly, evidence that access can be joyful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Temple University Press,<\/strong> Philadelphia<\/br>2025, 286 pages<\/br>","protected":false},"author":6506,"featured_media":275826,"template":"","categories":[884],"numeros":[8014],"disciplines":[3353],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[936],"artistes":[8042],"thematiques":[],"type_compte-rendu":[],"class_list":["post-275833","compte-rendu","type-compte-rendu","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","numeros-117-crip","disciplines-publication-en","auteurs-charlotte-jacob-maguire-en","artistes-amanda-cachia-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu\/275833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/compte-rendu"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/compte-rendu"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=275833"},{"taxonomy":"type_compte-rendu","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_compte-rendu?post=275833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}