Have you ever wondered how it might feel to run your palm through a Chinese porcelain vase or linger your fingers and feel the intricate design of a small ivory elephant displayed in a Museum?
Sounds criminal? Legally Yes! Logically, kind of yes; sort of no!
Among the five human senses, Touch provides perceptual experience to understand the environment and surroundings. [1] However, when it comes to touching something preserved in a museum, there is an exhausting list of socio-cultural, political, scientific, and intellectual limitations to consider.
Touch has a multi-layered exposure in the cultural realm. Whether it’s about caressing the stone head of Shiva’s vahana [2] ‘Nandi’ in a Hindu temple to get his blessings, or drawing out an Omikuji [3] (Fortune slip) at Japanese Shinto shrines & Buddhist temples to discover the awaited fortune, or lighting a candle in a church, the human senses crave for the blend of ‘reality’ and ‘spirituality’ through the assurance of touch. Similarly, when we enter a museum with several historic objects that tickle our aesthetic senses and trigger our curious minds, we crave to experience the blend. This time, the blend of reality with unbelievable beauty and skills. Our senses wish to conquer the ‘unknown’. For example, how does the ivory feel when we touch it? How smooth is the surface of a porcelain vase?
Just staring at the well-preserved artifacts doesn’t seem enough to discover its material, texture, size, greatness, or just beauty. Most of the time, the traditional glass displays prevent us from committing the ‘crime.’ But if we look through the lens of instincts, it’s humane. And not every visitor of a museum has adapted the intellectual resources and museum mannerisms that prevent us from touching the Bharhut Stupa at the Indian Museum (Kolkata, India). There have always been some instances where we witness people being curious about an artifact, leaning towards it, and casually touching it in the blink of an eye. No kind requests, textual signage (Fig. 1), or strict warnings from museum security guards can transform the companionship of this curiosity and touch unless there is a penalty. The urge to touch an artifact comes from the instinct of learning more about it. Fiona Candlin says it’s easier to learn about things once you handle them.[4] However, some modern museums have chosen to search for alternatives to the urge by making the spaces more interactive or immersive with multisensory activities or displays.
According to Candlin, in a museum space, Touch is a way of removing the physical barriers between the object and the visitor.[5] Museums have always put efforts and importance in creating a significant visual experience for visitors and admirers of art. But immersing in culture requires more. Vision is the first step towards that immersion. Including Sight, Smell, Sound, Touch, can make a big difference to that experience. Besides being the carrier of history and culture, museums are also the storyteller of an artifact’s journey. Soetsu Yanagi claims that appreciating an object continuously needs a historical hiatus.[6] The appreciation requires either a pause of knowledge or a pause of feeling. Historically, the journey of an artifact begins from the mind of the creator. The process of creation takes a pause when it’s acquired by a connoisseur. Then the process of appreciation originates. According to Arjun Appadurai, value is embodied in an object when it becomes a commodity through social or economic exchange.[7] Thus, being appreciated, admired, and used by a connoisseur enhances the value of an artifact way more. This phase of admiration includes touch, sight, smell, sound (in specific cases), and discussions. Culturally, showing off their treasured art collection and explaining its journey to guests or visitors has always been a special activity for art collectors. That’s another way of building the ‘social life’ of objects; through knowing, appreciating, and admiring. Hence, touch has been an intriguing part of this experience to re-discover newer features of the artifact. But comparing the same to modern museums and their representation of art will be unfair, keeping the amount of effort, research, conservation, and preservation in mind.
Generally museums go through a long-discussed debate of whether touch can be an element of the broader visitor experience. It would raise a huge amount of concerns about ruining the longevity of artifacts, destroying them slowly, and mainly the uncertainty of handling. Objects that survived years after years inside a glass cabinet with utmost care and conservation, can’t be sacrificed for human experience or behavioural experiments. But when it comes to building an inclusive and accessible environment, re-considering sight, smell, sound, and touch is one of the best ways to diversify a cultural space. And touch can be one of the ways to make cultural resources accessible to visually impaired visitors and beyond. For example, museums creating exhibition signage in braille, providing audio-guides, adding audio-descriptions in mobile apps, are a few steps forward to the vision.
The emergence of interactive and immersive innovations in museums or cultural spaces has revolutionized the idea of touch being a part of the visitor experience. Museums like The Louvre, The British Museum, The MET, J. Paul Getty Museum have adapted to methods and ideas that open the doors to intertwine the visual and tactile experience of admiring art and its process. In 1995, the Louvre opened its Tactile Gallery[8] for the visually impaired visitors, but with its access to all. Recently, the J. Paul Getty Museum included a 3D modelled replica of a foot which was part of the sculpture Torso of a Crouching Woman by French sculptor Camille Claudel[9] in the exhibition ‘Camille Claudel’ (2024). They also consulted conservators and artists to replicate a few small-scale models in terracotta, bronze, marble, and plaster that visitors could touch and build an understanding of materiality, texture, and the artistic process (Fig. 2).
On the other side of the world, Dr. Kojiro Hirose has been researching and developing the Tactile learning in exhibitions for visually impaired (not limited to) visitors at the National Museum of Ethnology in Japan. In 2012, he developed “Touch the World: widen your perspective” where visitors could discover the objects and space through three definite steps; Stop & Touch, Look & Touch, Don’t look – just Touch.[10] Visitors of the museum exclaimed that they could feel and understand the material differences, and texture that they couldn’t recognise just by looking at the objects.
While developing modern museums, the exhibition policies have started to witness the inclusion of more immersive and interactive spaces. Some museums like TeamLab Planets or TeamLab Borderless in Japan are fully dedicated to the immersive experience of the visitors while showcasing art pieces created with digital methods and developed technology. Whereas some exhibitions like Critical Zones: In Search of a Common Ground have brought history, science, and technology together and let the visitors embrace them through interactive activities and displays.
Interactive Museum Spaces
“Stand in a way that is comfortable and safe.
Imagine:
Water at your ankles
Then at your calves
At your thighs
Your waist
Chest
Chin
Do you still feel comfortable and safe?”
-was written on the floor (Fig. 3) of the exhibition hall of Critical Zones: In Search of a Common Ground in the Indian Museum, Kolkata. It was a traveling exhibition, based on the concept by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel.[11] The mentioned written piece was a part of an interactive workshop conducted by Curator Mira Hirtz. The participants were asked to think of something that they feel or which relates to the exhibition and its representation. They were provided with a chalk to write on the red floor of the hall. This interactive activity helped the participants to re-imagine the exhibitions and their ideation, which couldn’t be achieved with visuality itself.
On the other hand, a virtual reality experience installed in a distinct corner of the exhibition intrigued the visitors more. The mere opportunity of witnessing mapped micro-ecosystems through the VR glasses was a hit among the museum visitors (Fig. 4). Touching the ‘unknown’ realm through technology and artistic development proved to be widely appreciated.
The Exploratorium is a science museum in San Francisco that has built most of its exhibition pieces based on the idea of experiments and interactive activities. It’s a highly engaging museum space filled with scientific instruments and displays. In one corner, we can touch iron dust on a magnetic surface to see the texture change. Whereas on the other side, one can touch the artificial fog coming out of the circular pedestal. Seeing a happy kid standing on that pedestal and trying to catch the fog with his bare hands is also a treat to the visual experience (Fig. 5).
The Cloud by artist Caitlind r.c. Brown and Wayne Garrett is a sculpture made with burned-out light bulbs that is shaped in a cloud with plenty of chains hanging from it. The visitors are encouraged to stand underneath the electrical Cloud and pull the dangling chains to turn on the bulbs that work (Fig. 6).[12] Some of them work, some of them don’t. When one pulls it and sees a small part light up above their head, they embrace the energy and help the artist to successfully achieve his/her vision. One pull on the string takes the visitor closer to the intention of art and its process.
The art installation of Beauty by artist Olafur Eliasson[13] at the Singapore Art Museum (Fig. 7), is an astonishing interactive piece of work. The artwork is created with spraying water nozzles and spotlights that form the internal reflection of light and make the rainbow colours visible through the drizzling water droplets. People visiting the exhibition can freely touch the droplets, stand under the drizzling water, walk through it, or just see it unfold from afar. If you choose to walk through the drizzling water or just let it fall on your palm, you deliberately allow yourself to be a part of the artwork itself while embracing it with a physical touch.
Immersive Museum Spaces
In the modern art world, immersive artworks have emerged to allow the audience to be a part of the artistic process or outcome as well. Some of the museums intend to provide an immersive experience to its visitors.
The magical pencil from the TV show Shakalaka Boom Boom was the ultimate dream collection for Indian 90s kids. A pencil that makes every drawn object alive and real in seconds. The immersive exhibition Future World: Where Art meets Science at the Art & Science Museum in Singapore brings a similar version of that dream-come-true moment. Imagine you are inside an ocean and you are in charge of creating one marine creature on your own. That’s what you can do when you fill the colours in the given sheet that already has an oceanic creature like fish, turtle, or sea horse drawn on it. You put your completed work under the scanner and in 2 minutes it appears and moves on the walls around you (Fig. 8).
In the same exhibition, you can also be in the dreamland of colourful petals that move around a certain wall. But they don’t like when you touch them. You touch them and they run away! (Fig. 9) It’s interactive and immersive at the same time.
How does it feel when you enter a museum and you find yourself in knee-deep water? TeamLab Planets in Tokyo brings that for its visitors inside the third room among the eleven immersive experiences in the museum. It allows you to be in a closed room where you walk through the water that comes a bit below your knees and you see projection of marine creatures like colourful fishes, and turtles around you (Fig. 10). The projected water waves and sea animals touch you and vice versa.
Another immersive exhibition brings the visitors inside the world of infinity lights where they can walk through the string of lights and see them change continuously (Fig. 11). The same immersive experience can also be witnessed at the Art and Science Museum in Singapore (Fig. 12).
Moving on from projecting fauna on the walls and over the water, the TeamLab Planets also allows the visitors to lie on the ground and see floral patterns move around the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of the room (Fig. 13 & Fig.14). In the garden themed exhibitions, one can lie on the mirrored floor and look up at the real flowers hanging from the ceiling (Fig. 15). They are featured as shy floras which move away if a visitor tries to touch them. But the urge to touch it, and the flora’s movement is an intricate part of the experience.
Kojiro Hirose explains how humans have mostly emphasized the visual experiences more than the tactile ones. But in a museum space, time flows differently between the visual and tactile exhibitions.[14] Developing creative tactile spaces in a museum brings opportunities for visitors to engage, interact, and learn about the unknown. Touch can build the sense of re-discovering texture, materiality, size, and feelings of connection to the past. It brings the visitor closer to the artifact or simply to the process of art. Instead of leaning towards an artifact to get a closer look at the detailed work, one can embrace the trajectory of an object or artwork through the caress of their palm. Though it’s hard to transform every visual experience into a tactile one. But it is always better to encounter some, than none. Thus, museums dedicating their exhibition policies towards developing tactile spaces and interactive programs have been a revolutionized step towards enhancing the visitor experience. With time, tactile interactions have become a creative way of imagining socio-cultural learnings in a museum space.
Footnotes:
[1] Christidou Dimitra, Pierroux Palmyre. “Art, touch and meaning making: an analysis of multisensory interpretation in the museum.” Museum Management and Curatorship, 2018, pp. 2. Taylor & Francis, doi: 10.1080/09647775.2018.1516561.
[2] In Hindu mythology, any God’s Vahana is the animal or creature that carries the god or goddess or acts as a mythical vehicle.
[3] Omikuji is a traditional Japanese fortune teller slip that one draws from the wooden boxes kept in Japanese Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples. The slip indicates about the good or bad fortune that one might experience in near future.
[4] Giaimo, Cara. Why can’t people stop touching museum exhibits? Atlas Obscura, 2017, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-touch-exhibit-objects-multisensory.
[5] Candlin, Fiona. “The Dubious Inheritance of Touch: Art History and Museum Access.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 5, no. 2, 2006, pp. 138. Sage Publications, doi: 10.1177/1470412906066906.
[6] Yanagi, Soetsu. The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Classics, 2018.
[7] Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
[8] Go ahead and touch, says Louvre museum. Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-feb-27-et-touchart27-story.html#:~:text=The%20Louvre%20opened%20the%20Tactile,Athens%20have%20entire%20tactile%20museums. Accessed 20 February 2025.
[9] Bach, Tuyet. Camille Claudel and Shaping the Visitor Experience. Association for Art Museum Interpretation, 2025, https://artmuseuminterp.org/camille-claudel-and-shaping-the-visitor-experience/.
[10] Hirose, Kojiro. “Research on Methods of “Touching the World” – The Aim of the Exhibit Area of Tactile Learning in Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, 2013.
[11] Critical Zones: In Search of a Common Ground. Max Muller Bhavan India, https://www.goethe.de/ins/in/en/kul/art/crz.html. Accessed 23 February 2025.
[12] Cloud. Exploratorium, https://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/cloud. Accessed 30 January 2025.
[13] Beauty, 19993. Olafur Eliasson, https://olafureliasson.net/artwork/beauty-1993/. Accessed 30 January.
[14] Hirose, Kojiro. “Research on Methods of “Touching the World” – The Aim of the Exhibit Area of Tactile Learning in Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, 2013.
References:
- Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things. Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Bach, Tuyet. Camille Claudel and Shaping the Visitor Experience. Association for Art Museum Interpretation, 2025, https://artmuseuminterp.org/camille-claudel-and-shaping-the-visitor-experience/.
- Candlin, Fiona. “The Dubious Inheritance of Touch: Art History and Museum Access.” Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 5, no. 2, 2006, pp. 137-154. Sage Publications, doi: 10.1177/1470412906066906.
- Christidou Dimitra, Pierroux Palmyre. “Art, touch and meaning making: an analysis of multisensory interpretation in the museum.” Museum Management and Curatorship, 2018, pp. 1-20. Taylor & Francis, doi: 10.1080/09647775.2018.1516561.
- Giaimo, Cara. Why can’t people stop touching museum exhibits? Atlas Obscura, 2017, https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/museum-touch-exhibit-objects-multisensory.
- Go ahead and touch, says Louvre museum. Los Angeles Times, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-feb-27-et-touchart27-story.html#:~:text=The%20Louvre%20opened%20the%20Tactile,Athens%20have%20entire%20tactile%20museums. Accessed 20 February 2025.
- Haines, Lesley. To Touch or Not To Touch: Interacting with Artifacts. The Mariners’ Museum and Park, 2016, https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2016/10/touch-not-touch-interacting-artifacts/.
- Hirose, Kojiro. “Research on Methods of “Touching the World” – The Aim of the Exhibit Area of Tactile Learning in Japan’s National Museum of Ethnology.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, 2013.
- Ucar, Ezgi. Multisensory MET: Touch, Smell, and Heart Art. The MET, 2015, https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/multisensory-met.
- Yanagi, Soetsu. The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin Classics, 2018.