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.