Curating access: disability art activism and creative accommodation

"This book is an interdisciplinary collection of twenty-four essays which critically examine contemporary exhibitions and artistic practices that focus on conceptual and creative aspects of access. Oftentimes exhibitions tack on access once the artwork has already been executed and ready to be installed in the museum or gallery. But what if the artists were to ponder access as an integral and critical part of their artwork? Can access be creative and experimental? And furthermore, can the curator also fold access into their practice, while working collaboratively with artists, considering it as a theoretical and practical generative force that seeks to make an exhibition more engaging for a wider diversity of audiences? This volume includes essays by a growing number of artists, curators, and scholars who ponder these ideas of ad-hoc, experimental and underground approaches within exhibition-making and artistic practices. It considers how, through these nascent exhibition models and art practices, enhanced experiences of access in the museum can be a shared responsibility amongst museum workers, curators, and artists, in tandem with the public, so that access becomes a zone of intellectual and creative "accommodation," rather than strictly a discourse on policy. The book provides innovative case studies which provide a template for how access might be implemented by individuals, artists, curators, museum administrators and educators given the growing need to offer as many modalities of access as possible within cultural institutions. This book shows that anyone can be a curator of access and demonstrates how to approach access in a way that goes beyond protocol and policy. It will thus be of interest to students and scholars engaged in the study of museums, art history and visual culture, disability, culture, and communication"--

Introduction : committed to change : ten years of creative access / Amanda Cachia -- The "swell" : disability arts in the time of COVID-19 / Faye Ginsburg, Mara Mills, and Rayna Rapp -- Becoming indisposable : curating disability in a time of pandemic / Jessica A. Cooley and Ann M. Fox -- Connect2Abilities : staging virtual intercultural collaboration during COVID-19 / Boram Lee, Ruth Rentschler, and Shin-Eui Park -- Disabled artists, audience, and the museum as the place of those who have no part / Jennifer Justice -- Generative forms of experiential access / Liza Sylvestre -- From dust to dust : hallucinating the absent exhibition / Fayen d'Evie -- Perspective : highlighting disabled experience through an interdisciplinary and socially engaged art project / Molly Joyce and Sandy Guttman -- Unseen journeys made visible : using socially engaged art to cross boundaries and create a universally enriching experience / Jean Cathro -- Human threads : altered states / Nicola White and Alison Stirling -- Incarnate experiences : learning to curate exhibitions for disabled bodies / Maite Barrera Villarías -- On brand : when design museums discover disability / Liz Jackson and Bess Williams…