Art Beyond Sight Awareness Alert I:

More to Art than Meets the Eye

Art Education for the Blind
Week is Here!
Celebrate October 11-25!

Awareness Week is a chance for museums, libraries, schools
and other community
institutions - even individuals -to showcase the work they
are doing to promote art
education for people who are blind or visually impaired. Our
Awareness Week will
launch with a Press Conference at the steps of City Hall,
NYC at 9 AM. If you are in
New York City, come join us!

For more information about Awareness Week see our website:
www.artbeyondsight.org

As Dr. Marc Maurer, president, National Federation of the
Blind states…
believe erroneously that art is primarily a matter of visual
appreciation.
art is of no interest to people who are visually impaired.
But research has shown that
people who are blind are able to understand and represent
concepts that we commonly
perceive as purely visual.

People who are blind both can and should have access to the
world
They should take their place in the arts and museum
communities, as participants,
contributors, and employees.

Spread The Word And Bring Art To Everyone In Your Community!
JOIN ART BEYOND SIGHT ONLINE COMMUNITY: in your Field or in
your Neighborhood

Discussion Groups -- share your experiences and talk to
experts.

We have five different discipline-based groups: Museums,
Educators, Learning Tools,
Community and Advocacy, and Theory and Research.
Listservs. State-by-state or Around the World

You can do your part!

Send this email to everyone on your list

DON
COURSE! October 18, 9AM-9PM
EST. This 12-session course covers a wide range of topics,
from research on tactile
perception to best-practices for developing a program for
people who are blind. Click
here for schedule and instructions about dialing in. Join us
for one or all of these
sessions. This is a FREE telephone conference call.

Participate in our eBay Benefit Auction. There are three
easy ways you can help: Sell
an item on eBay on behalf of Art Education for the Blind
(you choose the percentage of
your proceeds that go to AEB); buy an item being sold to
benefit AEB or make an
in-kind donation!

Register your accessible art program or museum on Vision
Connection
searchable database at www.visionconnection.org. This will
increase participation in
your programs and attract local patrons and tourists who are
blind or have low vision.

Become a mentor ! If you are a museum or an arts
professional and would like to
participate in an e-mentoring program for someone who is
blind or visually impaired,
please email your contact information to
[log in to unmask] ; subject line: Mentor
program


What is Art Beyond Sight?

Coordinated by Art Education for the Blind, Art Beyond Sight
is an international
collaborative of community-based groups and local affiliates
of national agencies;
museums and other arts-related organizations; elementary and
high schools; colleges
and universities; national and international advocacy
groups; and blind, visually
impaired, and sighted art enthusiasts. Art Beyond Sight
provides a forum for ongoing
interdisciplinary dialogues among researchers and
practitioners, who share expertise
and materials. On the local level, the collaborative assists
museum professionals and
other educators; parents; artists; and art lovers to create
vehicles for lasting
change in their communities.

READ on for more on the artists, museums and exciting
projects and events of the Art
Beyond Sight Collaborative and Art Beyond Sight Awareness
Week 2004.

Artist Focus

Esref Armagan



myself as an artist … and I
will probably die drawing,
congenitally blind figurative artist
from Turkey. Art Education for the Blind, Inc. organized Mr.
Armagan
show in New York City this past May.

Mr. Armagan has been working for the past 35 years. As a
child and young adult he
never received any formal schooling or training; he taught
himself to write and print.
He paints primarily in oil. First, using a braille stylus,
he etches an outline of
what he will paint. He needs to feel that he is "inside" his
painting -- in fact, when
he is drawing a picture of the sea, he often wonders if he
should wear a life jacket
so as not drown! When he is satisfied with his drawing, he
starts to apply the oils
with his fingers, allowing each color to dry before adding
the next. He receives no
assistance or training from any individual. He has learned
to draw perspective, and,
also, developed methods of doing portraits. For more
information and images of his
remarkable work, go to www.armagan.com

[Image, titled
upper half of the
painting is dominated by a large, green sailboat , with blue
sky and white, gray and
dark blue clouds behind the boat. In the lower half, two
fish swim in water that is
divided into three colored areas: red, blue and brown. The
fish look up at the boat.]

Museum Focus:

Albright-Knox Art Gallery
1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York 14222-1096. Tel:
716.882.8700 Fax

716.882.1958

More to Art than Meets the Eye:

Art Classes for Visually Impaired Adults
Tuesdays, October 19, 26 & November 2 , 5 - 7 P.M.
Sundays, October 24, 31 & November 71:30 - 3:30 P.M.

Education Department Classrooms and Galleries
Instructors: Carrie Marcotte and Jennifer Hirsch Bolduc
Non-members $50 series / Members $35 series
Fee includes materials.
Registration is required.


In recognition of Art Education for the Blind
annual Art Beyond Sight
Awareness Week, the Gallery
sponsoring a series of
art making classes for visually impaired adults. This series
of six art classes is
designed specifically for adults with all levels of vision
impairment.

Registrants will attend six 2-hour classes that will include
sensory rich tours of the
Gallery and multi-media art making experiences.

A survey of the Gallery
accomplished through touch
tours and verbal imaging.

Art making using a variety of materials will follow. Topics
to be covered include the
human figure, landscape, and ways the two are often linked
in painting and sculpture.

For more information about adult workshops, please call
270.8283 or visit
www.albrightknox.org.

The Dayton Art Institute.
456 Belmonte Park North, Dayton, Ohio, USA (937) 223-5277
website: www.daytonartinstitute.org, email:
[log in to unmask] The Dayton
Art Institute is open 365 days a year courtesy of the Bank
One Free Admission
Endowment.

Special exhibitions may carry a fee.

Access Art

Access Art, a collaboration between The Dayton Art Institute
and Wright State
University, makes art accessible to virtually everyone with
a computer and an Internet
connection-including individuals with visual, hearing and
mobility impairments whose
experiences with the world of art may previously have been
limited by their
disabilities.

For the visitor with vision impairments, this site includes
a verbal description of
every image to convey the appearance of the work in words.
Access Art will allow
visitors to select several tour options to explore the Art
Institute
Guided Tours organize artwork according to selected themes,
while Custom Tours are
based on a visitor
Access Art can be visited
at www.daytonartinstitute.org/accessart.

smARTour

The smARTour offers the opportunity to explore nearly 100
works of art in The Dayton
Art Institute

Information, which can be accessed randomly, includes Audio
Description, a basic
description of every art work on the tour, designed to aid
visitors with vision
impairments, in addition to layers entitled, Leo Shares his
Secrets, A Dialogue with
the Director, An Artist
Perspective, Art in Context
and Personal Favorites.

The smARTour is free and available during regular museum
hours.


Inspirational New Book from Germany:
I Know Where I Am: Children Born Blind Draw the World as
They Experience It
By Elke Zollitsch

The author-educator, Elke Zollitsch, created a teaching
project enabling two blind
children to fully participate in a regular primary school
class. For these children,
one of the greatest joys of this project was the opportunity
to make drawings, side by
side with their sighted classmates. Using a sharp pointed
pen upon a sheet of plastic,
the blind children finished one tactile picture after
another creating spontaneous
insights for
blind.

When these drawings were later exhibited in Munich, the
author described the moving
response which inspired the writing of this book:


teachers, artists and
academics discovered in the pictures at the exhibition an
essential testimony of what
it is to be human; evidence both strange and distanced yet
so close and familiar as to
touch one
began to talk to teach
other; could the blind open the eyes of the sighted as to
what is really the very
essence in life? It seemed so to us!

Responding to each drawing, the author has written three
line Haiku poems, as well as
commentary on each drawing and a description of the
project

For more information and images, see the author
www.blinde-zeichnen.de


Selected Art Beyond Sight Awareness Week Events
See our website, www.artbeyondsight.org for a full calendar
of events.


October 11

Colorado Ballet, Denver, is hosting "Ballet To-Go," a
hands-on ballet trunk and
introduction to ballet for people who are blind and visually
impaired, from 6-7:30
p.m. This is a free event; call (303) 837-8888, ext. 19, for
information and
reservations.

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota , FL ,
has accessibility tours
available throughout Awareness Week; call (941) 359-5762 to
arrange.


October 12

American Folk Art Museum, NYC , is offering descriptive
tours by Janet Lo, manager of
school and docent programs, of the museum's permanent
collection at 1 p.m. The tour is
geared towards an adult audience, but adaptable for
children. Please call (212)
265-1040, ext. 119, to confirm tour.

Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL , has a free
concert of 18 th -century music
(instrumental and choral) by students at the Alabama School
of Fine Arts , in its
Steiner Auditorium beginning at 10:15 a.m. After the
performance, students who are
blind and visually impaired will be invited to feel the
instruments. A Studio art
session will follow, with holiday card contests for
students. Contact
[log in to unmask] for more information.

The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Jacksonville, FL , is
holding its second annual
Open House, which will highlight programs such as touch
tours, an art exhibit, music
by students from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind,
use of tactile drawings,
art-making activities and a book signing by Jan Bevan, a
children's book author who is
blind.







_______________________________________________
Artbeyondsightmuseums mailing list
[log in to unmask]
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/artbeyondsightmuseums

Lisa Yayla
Huseby Kompetansesenter
Oslo Norway
[log in to unmask]

=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:

The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).

If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).