Art Beyond Sight Awareness Alert II

Art Beyond Sight Awareness Alert II ART FOR ALL SENSES

Celebrate October 2006!

Awareness Month is an opportunity for museums, libraries, schools and other community institutions and service agencies – even individuals –to showcase the work they are doing to promote art education for people who are blind or visually impaired. The 152 organizations celebrating this year’s Awareness Month are posted on our website www.artbeyondsight.org. People who are blind both CAN and SHOULD have access to the world’s visual culture. They should take their place in the arts and museum

NEWCOMERS TO ART BEYOND SIGHT AWARENESS MONTH 2006 PART I Focus On The Egyptian Museum, Cairo

Among this year’s first-time Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month celebrants is the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, which serves between 30 and 60 visually impaired visitors each week. Most are part of tours coordinated by the museum and various institutions in Egypt, but, occasionally, there are independent visitors, most of whom are tourists.

“Approximately 2 million Egyptians are visually impaired, representing a small but vital group in our society. Many of these individuals are youth and children, and their interest in their ancient history encouraged us to share with them the treasures in the Egyptian Museum at their own pace,” says Wafaa El Saddik.

Launched in 2004, the museum’s accessible programs include art workshops and tours of all exhibitions -- special, temporary and permanent. People who are blind are allowed to touch the more durable artifacts, i.e., those made of hard stones, such as granite and basalt. These include coffins with hieroglyphic inscriptions and statuary. For fragile artifacts, such as wooden objects, exact replicas are used to allow people with vision loss to appreciate the variety in ancient Egyptian art. Also offered are storytelling sessions: visitors gather around a relevant statue and listen to a story from ancient Egyptian literature, such as the “Shipwrecked Sailor”; the statue and touching is integrated into the story.

Workshops include making Ancient Egyptian-inspired objects with materials such as clay; learning about the Ancient Egyptian language and hieroglyphs through exploring carved wooden models (blind visitors can also take home sheets with hieroglyphs written upon them in Braille-style), and visits to the nearby the Pharaonic Village, where children and adults can touch models representing the various stages of mummification.

The museum is in the process of creating Braille labels for its displays, Braille books about the museum and Ancient Egypt; and tactile maps. Discussions are undergoing regarding creating an audio-library for the visually impaired visitors of the museum.

The Egyptian Museum was established in 1835 in an effort to prevent the plundering of architectural sites and provide a storage place for the artifacts. Its treasures were stored at various sites until the current museum was built in 1900. Today, it houses more than 120,000 objects. For more on this museum and its collection, visit its Web site: http://www.egyptianmuseum.gov.eg/

CW11 WPIX TV AND VARIOUS RADIO STATIONS SUPPORT AWARENESS MONTH WITH PSAs

The file attached to this Alert features the Public Service Announcement that CW11 WPIX TV in New York City created in support of Art Beyond Sight Awareness Month and will be airing throughout October. The reporter is Tiffany McElroy, one of the station’s early morning news anchors.

Several radio stations in NYC have also been running 30-second PSAs this month. Among them is The Jewish Guild for the Blind’s “In Touch” radio station. The “In Touch” PSA promotes the Sense & Sensuality exhibition at the Andrew Heiskell Library, 40 W. 20th St., NYC. This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Art Education for the Blind, BlindArt and the New York Public Library. Running from October 3 through October 30, it features award-winning multisensory artworks – all of which can be touched. Sense & Sensuality is on loan by kind permission of BlindArt, a public not-for- profit organization in the United Kingdom – Registered Charity No. 1104980.

CHECK OUT WHAT YOUR FRIENDS ARE DOING: CLICK ON THIS LINK TO THE AWARNESS MONTH CALENDAR FOR A LIST OF ACTIVITIES: http://www.artbeyondsight.org/change/aw-calendar.shtml