S3 Ep021 Communication Accessibility, ASL, and Inclusion in Museum and Exhibition Spaces, with Curator Rachel Seligman, Pt2
How can public spaces improve the communication accessibility of their exhibitions and programming? Rachel Seligman, the Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and the Malloy Curator at the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, will discuss her work towards greater communication accessibility in exhibition design and the museum space, particularly with respect to her curatorial work with Berlin-based contemporary artist Christine Sun Kim. Rachel shares:
The contributions to public space that art institutions are uniquely situated to make;
Why museums must go beyond ADA requirements,
Details about exhibition design, the organization of space, operations, and the inclusion of ASL in museum programming;
The importance of building relationships and listening.
Bio:
Rachel Seligman is the Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and Malloy Curator at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. She has a BA from Skidmore College and an MA in Art History from George Washington University. She has taught Art History at SUNY Adirondack in Glens Falls, NY, Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, and the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, and currently teaches a class called “Math in the Museum” at Skidmore College.
Her curatorial practice includes many interdisciplinary collaborative projects with faculty colleagues, on subjects including social class; activism, civil rights, and social justice; pattern in art and science; democracy and citizenship; and Solomon Northup, among others; as well as curating solo exhibitions of artists including Tim Davis, Lauren Kelley, Yvette Janine Jackson, and Christine Sun Kim, among others. Seligman is the co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave (Praeger, 2013), as well as author of numerous exhibition catalogues including Classless Society (Tang, 2014), Machine Project (DelMonico-Prestel, 2016), Sixfold Symmetry (Tang, 2018), Tim Davis – When We Are Dancing (I Get Ideas) (Tang, 2020), Like Sugar (Tang, 2020), FLEX (Tang, 2023), and the forthcoming Christine Sun Kim: Oh Me Oh My (Delmonico-D.A.P., 2024).
“ Yeah, I think museums have a very important role in social change. And again, I think that's because we are spaces in which we can share the work of artists and contemporary art museums in particular, which the Tang largely is. Our job is to present the work of artists who are out there right now responding to the world and making art that is, you know, deeply invested in these questions. And if we can share that work with the public, then we can get more people engaged with ideas and questions and issues that bend our general, our collective understanding towards social justice. ”
-Rachel Seligman
Transcript
Season 3, Episode 21 (Part 2) : Communication Accessibility, ASL, and Inclusion in Museum and Exhibition Spaces, with Curator Rachel Seligman
Rachel Seligman:
Our special skill is to build empathy, to help people imagine what other people's lived experiences are. And these are necessary tools to a more inclusive space, right? Museums and other art institutions and the artists themselves, they're all key to this journey for everyone because art is this incredibly unique form of communication that connects us both on an intellectual level, but also on a visceral, emotional level. And both of those ways of knowing are vital.
[Rhythmic sounds of electric train pulling into station]
[Subway chimes arpeggio played on mandolin]
Cevan Castle, Host:
Welcome to Towards a Kinder Public, a podcast dedicated to designing kinder public space that better meets our interconnected needs. I’m Cevan Castle, and along with Annie Chen, we are Kinderpublic.
We are so fortunate to be able to share this conversation with Rachel Seligman, who is the Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and the Malloy Curator at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College.
Earlier this year, the Tang presented an exhibition of the Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim, with works in sound, drawing, mural and videos. Christine Sun Kim explores themes of notation, transcription and conversion, scale, humor, vibration, body, volume, and language, particularly American Sign Language.
In this episode, which is part 2 of our conversation, Rachel discusses specific tools and alterations to exhibition elements and museum space that changed the communication accessibility of the Tang Museum. She shares about training for museum staff towards a more helpful and welcoming environment. She speaks about her role in ensuring ongoing growth in awareness and empathy. Visit our podcast page for more information and resources.
There is additional content at the end of this episode, concerning the way that public space is formatted to privilege speech and hearing-typical communication, that is really impactful. And Rachel shares one possible answer to the question, “How do you know when you have made a significant shift?”
Please consider engaging with this episode as one action you can take to support improved accessibility, inclusivity, diversity, and empathy in public space.
Now we’ll jump right into this amazing conversation- thank you for joining us!
[Subway chimes arpeggio played on mandolin]
Cevan, opening interview:
In this exhibition, did Christine Sun Kim give specific information about accessibility requirements in the display of her work, and accommodations to put in place for the exhibition? Would you share some of the changes that you made to your exhibition procedures and space for this?
Rachel Seligman:
Yes. Christine provided something she calls an access rider, and that's something that she provides to all venues that she's working with, and it's incredibly helpful.
So, again, I mean we are talking about this sort of imbalance where the burden is on the individual who's needing and trying to make the change, but she knows what she needs and she is very clear about sharing that.
And so for us, that was a great kind of baseline or a framework for us to begin working on, kind of a jumping off point for us, in starting our work towards thinking about how to learn more about the Deaf community and reviewing our own accessibility around the museum, and for us to think more expansively about how to serve our communities in the most welcoming way possible.
So it was really good, you know, it provided a base framework for us, but then it was this incredible jumping off point for us to think more.
Her access rider has a section about language, what language to use specifically when talking about her, it has a section about names and preferences for how to refer to her. It has links for more information about Deaf culture. It has lists of words not to use. And that was really useful for us because it gave us a sense of the importance of word choices, and the way that certain words can be really reductive, can be really othering, whether you're intending to or not.
And so for example, Christine does not want the words “silence” or “absence” used when talking about her and her work, or words that have “loss” or “less than” embedded in them in their meaning, or words like “inspiring” or “inspirational,” words that somebody might use with the best of intentions, but for her, they're wrong. They are reductive. And so for us, that was very, very useful to have.
This might not be the case for everyone in the disability community, and Christine does contextualize herself as a member of the larger disability community as well. And some people might be fine with some of that language, might be happy to be referred to as inspiring or something. But for Christine, that's not okay.
And also she let us know that whenever she's involved in a program, she requests that all videos and all events are captioned and interpreted. So that's another sort of baseline that she feels very strongly about.
So for her show, we have ASL interpreters for all events, all our tours, performances, talks, and so those are some of the things that we sort of established going into working with Christine in the museum.
Cevan:
I like this access rider so much. Is this a proprietary document that she has, or is this something that one can view? <laughing>
Rachel Seligman:<laughing> That's a really good question. I'm not sure. It's probably something she would not mind sharing with anybody who would be interested. And I actually took that, as I said, it was a kind of starting place and I used a lot of that document to create a kind of expansive info sheet for the staff at the Tang with a ton of resources and other kinds of things that she provided.
So her access rider has, as I said, FAQ pages and links to lots of different general information about the Deaf community. It also provides the names of a number of really useful apps for your phone that do things like voice record and print, sort of in real time, or apps for communicating basically by text between hearing individuals and members of the Deaf community, speech to text apps.
And so it was a really useful document for, not just for the curatorial staff, but for everyone at the museum.
And I also have a very good ASL dictionary app on my phone. And so these are things that I have used to expand my own awareness and knowledge, and ability to communicate.
Cevan:
Did her language or frameworks or the access rider, the request for accommodations, challenge the frameworks used by the museum prior to her exhibition?
Rachel Seligman:
Well, I guess what I would say is that we already have a fairly physically accessible building. We already caption all of our videos online and have alt text for all our images online.
So what we did, was we used a few rubrics, including an ADA rubric, and one from the National Endowment for the Arts, to evaluate ourselves. And we used that as a place to make some improvements, but we were already ADA compliant, which again is a baseline... it should not be the “okay, then I've checked the box and I'm done.”
But as a baseline, there were many things that we already had in place. We have a wheelchair available for anyone that wants to use it. Our floor plan is very physically accessible, but what we began to do is to think more carefully about our labels, and our gallery guides, and how to make them consistently and permanently accessible. So, printing in large type.
We instituted a brand new feature for interpretation in our elevator. I mentioned our elevator music series earlier, but because these are sound-based works, we now include in the materials for those shows, an audio description of the sound, and we'd write those in a mode that's directly inspired by Christine's captioning artwork. So she has a whole sort of series of artwork that is engaged with captioning and has a beautiful kind of conceptual framework for captioning that's much more expansive than what you would normally find. And so we really tried to internalize that and use that in writing our audio descriptions.
We've also now instituted ASL interpretation for our major annual public lectures, in perpetuity, and we offer ASL interpretation for all events that we do, with advance notice, so upon request, essentially. So those are just some of the things that have, I think, permanently changed the way that we operate in terms of, particularly for me as a curator, in terms of the ways that we interpret and provide contextualization around the exhibitions that we make.
Cevan:
And are there further disability frameworks or accommodations that you are exploring in your role, with regard to the museum as public space or publicly accessible art space, in terms of better including artists and guests of all abilities, or addressing unmet needs for other groups of individuals?
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah, for sure, as a curator, but also as the Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs, my role is to consider how our exhibitions can be spaces that everyone can access to the fullest extent possible, and to think about how our exhibitions and our museum more generally can be the most welcoming spaces that they can be for every kind of body that might enter those spaces.
So there is a list of things that I would like to develop and implement in terms of programming. We don't have touch tours, for example, currently. That's something I'm thinking a lot about and would like to try to develop.
I'd like us to continue to expand our seating options around the museum so that every exhibition has a bench or benches or chairs as well as in our atrium and our lobby spaces, so that there's a feeling of comfortable seating and rest, spaces for rest, within the museum.
We've incorporated braille into some exhibitions in the past, but not consistently, and that's something I'd like to explore and implement. You know, I think it's really important to think about this work as something that's ongoing, that is constantly being reassessed and expanded and developed and moderated, depending on the feedback that we get from communities that we're engaging with.
Cevan:
So this is kind of a broad question, but what should the goal of improved accessibility be, from your perspective? How have you defined success for the exhibition space? Or is this an ongoing investigation for you?
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah, yeah, it's an ongoing process. It's an ongoing investigation. I don't think accessibility looks or feels the same for everyone. I think it's really important to always keep listening to what the community is telling us, whether it's directly, or it's by who is and who isn't visiting the museum, and that we have to continually expand and adjust as we go.
I think the goal is to make the museum as welcoming as possible to the greatest number of people, while, obviously, maintaining the safety and security of the artworks on display. So there are some things that you can't do. There's a certain balancing. But to the extent that's possible, I want the museum to be a space that feels like it belongs to everyone, that everyone can see themself in the museum and feels comfortable and welcome in this space.
Cevan:
Does art space and academic space have a particular insight or ability to challenge conventions? And does art space have an obligation to reimagine the body in public space? What is the role of the museum in social change, and did this show challenge the museum's understanding of itself as public space?
Rachel Seligman:
I think artists are often at the vanguard of our collective imaginations, right? And maybe it's not so much of an obligation, but they are the ones who have the best tools and are the best equipped for re-imagining our world in all ways, including the body in public and private spaces. We just need to keep paying attention to what they're telling us and be responsive to it.
I think this show expanded and enhanced our understanding of ourselves as a space for the public, and it pushed us to keep striving because it's really important to learn and grow. You know, that's what we teach our students. So it's good for us to be modeling that ourselves.
Yeah, I think museums have a very important role in social change. And again, I think that's because we are spaces in which we can share the work of artists and contemporary art museums in particular, which the Tang largely is. Our job is to present the work of artists who are out there right now responding to the world and making art that is, you know, deeply invested in these questions. And if we can share that work with the public, then we can get more people engaged with ideas and questions and issues that bend our general, our collective understanding towards social justice.
Cevan:
The purpose of Kinderpublic is to advocate for accommodation that exceeds ADA and legal requirements. We believe a broader societal awareness of needs is a foundational piece of the success of inclusion and diversity in public space. What specific recommendations would you share with art exhibition spaces, regarding the opportunities for inclusivity in exhibition practice, and how can museums start to expand their ideas of accessibility?
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah, I would say it's not just about complying with ADA, right? I mentioned that before, that something like being wheelchair accessible is something that I think most institutions are very aware of at this point. It's a core part of any accessibility plan. So I would say it's more about building awareness of how bodies, other than our own bodies, how they navigate space and interact with the world, and that's crucial.
So I think that our superpower, maybe, our special skill, is to build empathy, to help people imagine what other people's lived experiences are. And these are necessary tools to a more inclusive space, right? Museums and other art institutions and the artists themselves, they're all key to this journey for everyone because art is this incredibly unique form of communication that connects us both on an intellectual level, but also on a visceral, emotional level.
And both of those ways of knowing are vital. Both of those ways of learning something new are vital when they go together, when they're hand in hand, the way that I think that they are when art is communicating to us, that's really powerful.
So I think that as art institutions, as museum spaces, we need to think about both representation, that is, who we are showing what stories they and we are telling, but also the implementation, the how we do it, meaning what structures and mechanisms are in place to allow the most people access to that content.
And I think the best way to do that is to ask questions, to be willing to make changes based on the feedback that you get, to be open to changing, evolving. And I would also say, because maybe that sounds really daunting, some changes are really simple and easy to make. It doesn't have to be difficult to make changes that will make a difference in people's experience of your space.
Cevan:
That's really wonderful. Thank you so much for all of that, for sharing your experience, for everything that you're doing. It's really important.
Rachel Seligman:
My pleasure.
Cevan:
So I will stop the recording unless there's anything else you would like to add. <laughing> We covered a lot.
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah, we did cover a lot. We did cover a lot.
I don't know, for me, this show has been transformative in my awareness and outlook and understanding. But one of the things that I was really struck by in doing this show was the realization that there was a really robust and vibrant Deaf community in Saratoga Springs and this area, that I had never seen, and did not seem in any way visible to me before working on this show.
And I think that just speaks to, they are sort of invisible to those of us who don't, whose lives don't intersect. And I don't know that, for me, that's really just sort of distressing. And so the show has asked me to consider, has asked me to think about all of the other communities that are existing but are not visible to me because I'm not aware or because I'm not making work that they can see themselves in, and they don't feel like the museum is a space for them. And so for me, that feels like something that's changed me. Not to center myself here, but...
Cevan:
And you kind of touched on that earlier actually when, and I realize now a little bit more about what you were talking about when you said, realizing that there were people that weren't visiting the museum and you could kind of evaluate what you were doing based on who…
Rachel Seligman:
Who isn't there.
Cevan:
<agreeing>….People that weren't there.
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah.
Cevan:
And now we've kind of come full circle to that comment. I think this is such a powerful story.
Could you just share a little bit more background about how you engaged the local Deaf community? Because I didn't know that this community was here either. And I have a child who is Hard of Hearing. We officially have the diagnosis now, and in searching for other individuals that we might speak with and spend time with, I was getting referred to communities an hour away.
And so it wasn't until you had this exhibition and you started going through all of the steps to be more inclusive, and to make your space more accommodating, and to welcome people at this group of people- right here- became visible. So can you talk about that?
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah. When we first began to do research thinking about outreach to the Deaf community, we looked around online, we talked to educators, but I was connecting with people in New York City. It was easier to find people in New York City than it was to find people in Saratoga. And we had a lot of different feelers out trying to make some connections.
And one of the things that was successful was talking to a woman based in New York who is part of the New York State Education Department, who is a Deaf Educator in the schools and was able to recommend some education organizations closer to home. So through that network, we were able to connect to some more Albany-area organizations. We tried a number of different people and finally connected with one person. And sometimes that's all it takes is just connecting with one person. So we learned that there was a woman teaching ASL at Adirondack Community College named Colette Steves, and we connected with Colette.
And Colette became the resource for us to then find this whole community. And so it was through Colette that we found some interpreters that were based in the area. It was through Colette that we opened up the museum to what is a regular, Saratoga Springs area, monthly ASL chat- an ASL meetup. And one of the things that we did is offer the museum to be the venue for one of those chats, I think it was the April.
And we hired Colette to teach our ASL workshops. And many members of the Deaf community came to those workshops even though they didn't really need to learn basic ASL, but just because it's an opportunity to gather. And I mean, this is a vast generalization, but a lot of Deaf communities spend a lot of their time communicating and existing and dealing with the hearing world. And so when they have moments to just be in community and communicate exclusively in ASL, they do that. And I've heard multiple people, I've had multiple members of the Deaf community joke about how long they like to stay and talk.
So it was really through finally finding Colette that this world opened up to us and she was really able to connect us. And having members of the community come to the events, then I was able to meet more and more people and make those connections and establish some relationships.
Cevan:
And were those ASL workshops that the museum held? Were they generally well attended? Did you have a good turnout?
Rachel Seligman:
They were incredibly well attended. We had, because of the nature of the kind of teaching, you can't really do it in a room with like 50 people. So we had a limited number of seats for each of them, and they were waiting-list only for all of them that we did during the semester.
And then we just did one last week that had about 20 people in it, which was a really nice size, actually.
We also, Colette came and taught an ASL workshop for Tang staff and students, which was quite wonderful. Those have been really great for everyone to deepen and expand their knowledge of the history of Deaf culture and also to learn some basic ASL, and to learn a little bit more about the ways in which it is different from- grammatically, and structurally, syntactically- different than spoken languages.
Cevan:
I really appreciate too that you gave a workshop to your staff, so people who were interacting with the public, could be more welcoming, could be more helpful.
And it's a wonderful language to learn, to the limited amount that I have learned, I've enjoyed it so much.
Rachel Seligman:
Yeah, me too.
Cevan:
It's a world language, and I think we should be generally learning it more. More public spaces should have fluency.
Rachel Seligman:
Yes, I completely agree. I completely agree. And many colleges and universities do now offer it as part of their world languages departments. Skidmore does. This is a very recent development, but a very encouraging one.
But as I mentioned, Adirondack Community College in our area also has been offering it for far, far longer than Skidmore. Kenyon College, which is where the show will be traveling after it leaves here, Kenyon also offers ASL and has for a number of years, and it's an incredibly popular language. It's always waitlisted.
And I think that just speaks to the fact that there's a desire and a drive, especially I think among younger people, to learn ASL and to be able to communicate in ASL.
Cevan:
And I think also, just touching on something that you said earlier, it’s understanding the beauty of the language and that all language learning has cognitive benefits. It's coming from a place of gaining language.
Rachel Seligman:
Yes, exactly. I think that's very, very well put. And as you said, all language acquisition has incredible cognitive value. And that may be true at certain moments of our development more than others, but at any stage and age of life, it is really beneficial.
Cevan:
Thank you so much for speaking with me today. I'm so appreciative of your work and all of the thought that you're putting into your exhibitions and the ways that people are able to access them.
Rachel Seligman:
Thank you very much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
Cevan:
My pleasure. Totally.
[Audio recording of “Tuning Forks on Resonators” demonstration of the interaction of sound waves with physical objects (from the Physical Science Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History) begins to play in background]
Cevan:
Be sure to check out our website, kinderpublic.com, for more information about our guest and the topic, as well as a full transcript of the conversation, which can be found on the podcast page. A captioned episode is available on our Youtube channel, where we are @kinderpublic.
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If you want to share information about the accessibility of public space, and places that are doing things right, email podcast at kinderpublic.com.
I’m Cevan Castle, my guest has been Rachel Seligman, the Assistant Director for Curatorial Affairs and the Malloy Curator at the Tang Museum in Saratoga Springs, New York. Have a very good week!
[“Tuning Forks on Resonators” fades out]
Mentioned in this episode:
Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
Christine Sun Kim: Oh Me Oh My
Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
Remai Modern, Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Sounds/Visuals in this episode:
“Tuning Forks on Resonators“ demonstration video of the interaction of sound waves with physical objects, care of the Physical Science Collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History
Resources:
National Endowment for the Arts Accessibility Self Evaluation Workbook