Numerous museums and galleries now offer tactile opportunities as part of their access provision. This article asks why touch is deemed to be more accessible than vision as a way of learning about art and what repercussions that has for blind and visually impaired audiences. While touch has been discussed in many different contexts, touch also has a specifically art historical lineage where it is characterized in predominantly pejorative terms. This then raises serious questions concerning the use of touch within contemporary access provision: is touch used in access provision because it is considered to be more basic, easier than seeing? Does touch remain an adjunct to vision, a lesser, substitutive form of seeing? Alternatively, are art historical stereotypes so outdated that they are irrelevant for current museum practice? In which case does access provision show touch to be a qualitatively different route to knowledge? And, if this is not the case, how can we start to construct a model of touch that interlinks with vision without being subsumed by it, where touch concerns thought as well as feeling?Museums are no longer places where touch is entirely forbidden. Instead there are numerous opportunities for visitors to hold and examine original artefacts or artists' tools. When objects are very rare the museum may provide replicas, but otherwise displays of clothing, textiles, ceramics, coins and metal-ware regularly have selected examples for the audience to handle.
Over the last six years there has been a massive increase in the number of students studying for practice‐based doctorates in Art and Design. It is now possible to do a practice‐based PhD in over forty departments, although what is expected from doctoral students varies considerably across institutions. In 1997 the United Kingdom Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) addressed the variance between practice‐based doctorates in the report Practice‐Based Doctoratesin the Creative and Performing Arts and Design. This paper examines the recommendations made by the report and asks to what extent does it acknowledge art as a legitimate research practice within the university. The UKCGE report recommends that all practice‐based PhDs have a substantial theoretical and
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