Touch a statue or taste a Mondrian? This is of course not the intention in most museums, except in the Sensory MoMa. The traveling and inflatable museum for modern art wants to stimulate the senses. On the grounds of Visio in Grave, a center for people with a visual impairment, Irene Schumans (85) was able to experience it on Wednesday morning. “I think this is great and quite an experience,” she says.
Several large white spheres together form the mobile museum of modern art, or it Sensory MoMa. “It is a museum for the senses. Normally you go to a museum to view paintings or sculptures, but that is not the case here. You can feel, smell and taste the paintings and works of art here,” says museum teacher Nielton Pinheiro.
So there are no ‘no touching’ signs in this museum. Initiator of Sensory MoMa is the Ears and Eyes Shortage foundation. They stand for good accessibility of museums for everyone, especially for visitors with a visual, hearing or other disability.
“My job is to show people around and guide them,” says Pinheiro. One of his guests is 85-year-old Irene Schumans. She was born with about ten percent vision. “I had eleven eye operations in the 1970s and the last one was fatal to my vision.” Since the failed cataract operation, a procedure to restore vision, she has been blind.
Yet Irene did not give up. “I enjoy going out. I don’t have to visit a normal museum, because that is of no use to me. So I think this is great and quite an experience.”
Sensory MoMa can be visited free of charge until Sunday, October 19 between ten in the morning and half past four in the afternoon, on the grounds of Koninklijke Visio Onderwijs at Jan van Cuykdijk 1 in Grave.
There is a recognizable painting in one of the white spheres of the museum. It’s a counterfeit Mondriaan, but made of candy. Each color in the painting has its own flavor. Irene takes one of the white candies. “The color white tastes sweet, but I don’t really like it. But I never thought about the fact that you can taste a color.”
In another room there is a work of art showing stones from all over the world. Each stone has its own scent that is reminiscent of ‘home’. Irene bends down and sticks her nose in a kind of keyhole. “I smell something sweet,” she says. “It reminds me of how pudding used to be made, by hand. It takes me back to that time a bit.”
After an hour of feeling, smelling and tasting, Irene leaves the museum satisfied. “Well, we’ve seen this again,” she says with a laugh. “I still talk about ‘seeing’ and ‘watching’. That’s still normal for me, because I was once able to do that.”
“The museum is not only for people with a visual impairment, but also for others,” emphasizes Frans ter Beek, teacher at Viso. “We think it is important for our students that there is a connection with the outside world.”
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