How to make museums truly accessible to the public?

THE MAP TEAM

Museum of Art and Photograph, Bangalore

In the heart of Bengaluru, about 10 minutes away from the green shade of Cubbon Park, stands the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP). We at MAP want to ensure that the museum as a space and an institution provides as many points of entry to as diverse a group of people as possible.

MAP opened its doors to the public on 18th February 2023 and in the year and two months since its inception, we have hosted multiple exhibitions (such as Inheritance, What The Camera Didn’t See, etc.), workshops (such as Imagining Form, Act at MAP, etc.) talks, walkthroughs and youth engagement initiatives.

The architects of the MAP building, Mathew & Ghosh, in collaboration with Diversity and Equal Opportunity Centre (DEOC), integrated comprehensive accessibility features in our building design to support a wide range of disabilities. There is a rampway entrance leading up to the museum entrance and a spacious lift alongside the staircase leading to the upper floors. The lift features an operating panel that can be accessed from a wheelchair. MAP has three all genders restrooms, one of which also has a baby changing station. Right outside the restrooms, there are drinking water fountains placed at two different heights– to ensure people of different statures can access it. Our Auditorium and the Learning Centre are fitted with an induction loop for people who use hearing aid with T-coil, and there is a Quiet Room that works as a space to reset and rest during the museum experience.

Apart from the physical aspects of the building, accessibility is woven into exhibitions and programmes at MAP. There are sign language interpreters communicating in ISL at programmes and tactile pieces in some exhibitions.

ISL Interpretation at the exhibition, Hello & Goodbye:

Postcards from the Early 20th Century

ISL Interpretation at the exhibition, Beyond Theory:

Mapping Feminist Practices in the Contemporary

A visitor interacting with a Tactile Artwork

Hands touching and interacting with a Tactile Artwork

The ground and first floors of the museum have exhibits that are free and open to all while the floors above are ticketed, housing Jim Lambie’s Zobop (on view until July 21, 2024), and the permanent exhibitions of Outside In: Meera Mukherjee and Jaidev Baghel, and VISIBLE/INVISIBLE: Representations of Women in Art through the Collection at MAP. But every Tuesday from 2 to 6:30 pm, every exhibition and programme (including the ticketed installation and exhibitions) are open and free to the public.

There are touch screens across each floor of the museum that allow for a digital experience by going through the collections online and engaging in digital activities particularly curated by the museum such as the Bouquet of Hope (where you can go through floral paintings and photographs that are a part of MAP’s collection and send them to someone as an e-bouquet). There’s a digital gallery on the first floor where visitors can go through exhibitions curated online.

We also have three ongoing curated exhibitions that people can explore– Hello & Goodbye: Postcards from the Early 20th Century, Outside In: Meera Mukherjee and Jaidev Baghel, and VISIBLE/INVISIBLE: Representations of Women in Art through the Collection at MAP, as well as installations such as Nek Chand’s sculptures, Arik Levy’s Rock Formation 420 and Welcome Desk, Tarik Currimbhoy’s Cobra 1/1, and Ayesha Singh’s Continuous Coexistences.

Apart from these, we are part of collaborative efforts with multiple stakeholders to make museums inclusive and accessible for all. Last year in July, we organised and hosted the conference Inclusion in Cultural Organisations that brought together experts from the arts, as well as from the broader development sector to highlight and demystify the complexities of inclusion within the arts. The conference is an annual event at MAP and next scheduled for September 2024.

In celebration of the International Week of Deaf People, we hosted an array of events, film screenings, walkthroughs and talks last year. Our Inclusion team collaborated with organisations like Hear a Million to present programming that explored the significance of Indian Sign Language and Deaf culture in our society. We will be celebrating this and programming around it in September 2024 as well.

MAP has also been a part of Purple Fest: Celebrating Diversity 2024. Organised by the Office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities in Goa, we hosted a tactile booth offering an exhibition-style display, accompanied by an exclusive audio guide for a comprehensive experience.

Beyond programming, events, accessibility features, we are constantly learning. MAP commissioned a research study to The ReReeti Foundation to understand the challenges that people with disabilities face while accessing museums and other arts and cultural spaces. The Inclusion in Museums: Perspectives of People with Disabilities report can be read here. MAP is a museum that is democratic at heart, inclusive and accessible for all. But despite our intentions, we know we can always learn where to better ourselves and the museum experience. So we hold onto a spirit of learning, staying open to feedback and collaborations on ways we can grow. We hope we can start the necessary conversations that can take us all toward a more inclusive future.

View original pages, photographs & credits