More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art

by Georgina Kleege

In the quarter century following the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, art museums, along with other public institutions, were tasked with making their facilities and collections more accessible to people with disabilities. Although blind and other disabled people have become marginally more visible in recent years, the vast majority of blind Americans remain undereducated and unemployed. In More Than Meets the Eye , Georgina Kleege shows how the scrutiny of one cultural issue-access to arts institutions-in relation to one subset of the disabled population- blind people-can lead us to larger and more general implications.

Kleege begins by examining representations of blindness, arguing that traditional theories of blindness often fail to take into account the presence of other senses, or the ability of blind people to draw analogies from non-visual experience to develop concepts about visual phenomena. Following this, the book shifts its focus from the tactile to the verbal, describing Denis Diderot's remarkable range of techniques to describe art works for readers who were not able to view them. Diderot's writing not only provided a model for describing art, Kleege says, but proof that the experience of art is inextricably tied to language and thus not entirely dependent on sight.

By intertwining her personal experience with scientific study and historical literary analysis, Kleege challenges traditional conceptions of blindness and overturns the assumption that the ideal art viewer must have perfect vision. More Than Meets the Eye seeks to establish a dialogue between blind people and the philosophers, scientists, and educators that study blindness, in order to create new aesthetic possibilities and a more genuinely inclusive society.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction, Art

176 pages, Hardcover

Published January 10, 2018

About the author

Georgina Kleege is a Lecturer in English at the University of California Berkeley. She teaches creative writing and disability studies.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is great, but the production values from OUP are not. The book looks cheap, and the copy editor was obviously asleep.

[Jasper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and insightful, a topic that I've never really considered before, but this book has caused me to totally rethink my perception of art, as well as art accessibility.

[mak · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) STELLAR 3rd chapter about the visibility of braille and invisibility of blindness, some great reflections about tactility in general… kinda lacklustre boring everything else

[Anexis Matos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really informative. I loved reading this from a blind person's point of view since I'm blind myself. Looking forward to reading her other books.

[Mills College Library]

701.03 K638 2018