AEB 2009 Multimodal Art Conference
Researchers, Practitioners Meet to Make Art Education Accessible
Mar 10, 2009
Art Education for the Blind (AEB) and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) will host their third biennial International Conference, Multimodal Approaches to Learning, on Friday and Saturday, October 16 and 17 at the MMA, located at 1000 5th Avenue in New York City.
The conference will focus on challenges that educators, artists, museum professionals, architects, and designers face in creating inclusive learning environments and opportunities that serve all audiences, especially those with sensory impairment and students with different learning styles.
“It’s a forum for researchers and practitioners, for them to share applications for learning development in the education and exhibition of art,” says, Nina Levent, AEB executive director and co-author of Art Beyond Sight: A Resource Guide to Art, Creativity, and Visual Impairment (AFB Press, 2003). “A major goals is to help develop an audience of art devotees among the disabled and to create teaching techniques that bring art to life through the senses.”
Art Beyond Sight - Multimodal Approaches to Learning International Conference
The Art Beyond Sight conference will showcase best practices in classroom and museum education, pioneering approaches to learning and multi-sensory exhibition and program design. Concurrent sessions will include discussions on:
- Education program design
- Product design
- New technology and the senses
- Museums and learning environments in the 21st century.
The multidisciplinary plenary sessions (a trademark of the Art Beyond Sight conferences) will feature art historians, anthropologists, curators, neuroscientists, new media and Universal Design experts, architects, and educators, who will present their perspectives on disability, the senses, art and education.
Plenary session topics include:
- Senses and Contexts: for anthropologists and art historians
- Neuroscience and the Senses
- Art Identity and Disability
- Soundscapes
- New Technologies and the Senses
- Touch Objects as Learning Tools
- Multisensory Universal Design.
Art Beyond Sight Conference scheduled speakers include:
- Constance Clausen, Sensory Historian, Concordia University
- Yuri Danilov, Director of Clinical Research, Neurology, University of Wisconsin
- Madalina Diaconu, Philosophy Professor (Aesthetics) University of Vienna
- Patrick Dvelieger, University of Leuven
- David Howes, Anthropologist, Concordia University
- Georgina Kleege, Professor, Disability Expert, University of Berkeley
- Lofti Merabet, Neurologist, Harvard Medical School
- Carlos Mourao Pereira, Architect, Lisbon
- Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Neurologist, Harvard Medical School
- Richard Sandell, Director of Museum Studies, University of Leicester.
Conference panelists include: Mandayam A. Srinivasan, MIT Touch Lab; Michael Schneider, ESI; Edmund Mooney, sound designer and artist (NY); Alison Jones, artist, Liverpool (UK); Heather Bowring, artist, London; John Bramblitt, artist, Denton (TX); Edu-Art; Gioia Aloisi and Monica Gorini, artists, Milan; Rebecca Fuller, RAF Models; Anna Schuleit, artist (MA); Eric Brun-Sanglard, Interior Designer (CA); Marcus Weisen, Museums and Galleries without Barriers; Hannah Goodwin, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Trish Maunder, Exhibit Developer and Educator.
For more information on the Art Beyond Sight: Multimodal Approaches to Learning International Conference, contact AEB project coordinator Marie Clapot at 212.334.8723.
About Art Education for the Blind
AEB promotes equal access to visual culture and endeavors to provide the life-enhancing power of art (including art history, education, and museum exhibits) to people who are blind or visually impaired through Art Beyond Sight, an international, multi-disciplinary collaborative of blind and sighted museum professionals, artists, educators, scientists, scholars, and rehabilitation professionals.
On both the theoretical and practical level, the Art Beyond Sight conference seeks to change attitudes about art’s accessibility. “If you’re blind, you might think of a museum as a just place full of glass boxes you constantly bump into,” says Levent. “We’re working to change that perception.”
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