1st Edition
Curating Access Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation
Introduction: Committed to Change—Ten Years of Creative Access
Amanda Cachia
Part I: Curatorial Reflections in the Age of COVID-19
Chapter 1 The "Swell": Disability Arts in the Time of COVID-19
Faye Ginsburg, Mara Mills, and Rayna Rapp
Chapter 2 Becoming Indisposable: Curating Disability in a Time of Pandemic
Jessica A. Cooley and Ann M. Fox
Chapter 3 Connect2Abilities: Staging Virtual Intercultural Collaboration during COVID-19
Boram Lee, Ruth Rentschler, and Shin-Eui Park
Part II: Curatorial Reflections
Chapter 4 Disabled Artists, Audience, and the Museum as the Place of Those Who Have No Part
Jennifer Justice
Chapter 5 Generative Forms of Experiential Access
Liza Sylvestre
Chapter 6 From Dust to Dust: Hallucinating the Absent Exhibition
Fayen d’Evie
Chapter 7 Perspective: Highlighting Disabled Experience through an Interdisciplinary and Socially Engaged Art Project
Molly Joyce and Sandy Guttman
Chapter 8 Unseen Journeys Made Visible: Using Socially Engaged Art to Cross Boundaries and Create a Universally Enriching Experience
Jean Cathro
Chapter 9 Human Threads: Altered States
Nicola White and Alison Stirling
Chapter 10 Incarnate Experiences: Learning to Curate Exhibitions for Disabled Bodies
Maite Barrera Villarías
Part III: Access Critique
Chapter 11 On Brand: When Design Museums Discover Disability
Liz Jackson and Bess Williamson
Chapter 12 Accommodating and Enabling Anxiety Disorders and Agoraphobia in Digital Access Systems for Cultural Heritage
Johnathan Thayer and Erik Pagan
Chapter 13 Do You Hear My Point? Addressing Accessibility Issues within Spatial Audio
Jesse Austin-Stewart
Part IV: Collaboration & Conversation
Chapter 14 Codesigning Access: A New Approach to Cultures of Inclusion in Museums and Galleries
Janice Rieger, Bree Hadley, Sarah Barron, Sarah Boulton, and Catherine Parker
Chapter 15 Desiring Disruption: Experimental Approaches to Audio Description
Ramya Amuthan, Emily Cook, Sean Lee, Andy Slater, and Aislinn Thomas
Chapter 16 Curating Together: A Tangled, Intergenerational, Interdependent Community of Practice
Eliza Chandler, Carla Rice, Sean Lee, and Max Ferguson
Chapter 17 Networks of Care: Collectivity as Dialogic Creative Access
Amanda Cachia
Part V: Artistic Access Praxis
Chapter 18 Troublesome Access in Pope.L’s Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration
Christopher Robert Jones
Chapter 19 "My Practice is Staying Alive": Critique and Care in the Sculptures of Emily Barker
Brandon Sward
Chapter 20 Considering Amanda Coogan’s Performance Art as an Accessible Practice
Caitlin Swindell
Chapter 21 Open Access: Accessibility as a Temporary, Collectively Held Space
Carmen Papalia
Chapter 22 Alt Text as Poetry Project
Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan
Chapter 23 Disability Access Rider
Johanna Hedva
Chapter 24 A Primer On Working With Disabled Group Members: For Feminist/Activist Groups and Organizations
RA Walden
Index
Biography
Amanda Cachia is an independent curator and critic from Sydney, Australia. She received her PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the University of California San Diego in 2017. Cachia has curated approximately 40 exhibitions, many of which contain social justice themes and content. Her research interests include contemporary art and disability, decolonizing the museum, and accessible curatorial practices.
“Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation is a must-read for students, museum workers, and scholars alike. Published in 2023, this anthology features 24 essays from 45 artists, scholars, and curators. The collection features reviews of specific disability-centered exhibitions and artistic practices that center accessibility as an integral part of culture creation. Curating Access asks bold questions about the role of the artist, curator, and museum in the promotion, planning, and ensuring of accessibility in contemporary exhibitions. Rather than considering the accessibility of exhibitions and artworks after they have been planned, the authors featured in Curating Access instead ask how radical new modalities of access can be expanded in museums…Curating Access highlights how important it is for museums to evolve beyond outdated policies of minimum compliance with accessibility standards and realize that “access is a topic for creative and intellectual consideration in curatorial and artistic practice, moving well past the checklist for meeting the needs of disabled audiences.” By providing readers with exhibition reviews, artists’ insights, and ideas for radically inclusive exhibit designs, Curating Access emphasizes the importance of centering the disability community in conversations about inclusivity.”
Abigail Lowery, ‘Accessibility as Praxis’, Fwd: Museums Journal (July 2024)
