Museums Hosts Touch Tours for the Blind inerested in Culture

Museums touch tours for Visually Impaired and Blind increased visits

Angel Ayala, left, and Austin Seraphin 
touch a quartzite likeness of Ramesses II 
at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, 
Monday Nov. 25, 2013.

Lately many museums offer facilities for visually impaired. The most common would be magnifying glasses and online audio descriptive tours. At last, blind people have also got the chance to enjoy their visits to certain museums. Museums up until now have been very visual but certain museums arrange scheduled programs or by request, and offer special tours, allowing guests to touch exhibits.They have the opportunity to examine through touch a wide range of objects.

In order to help understand and experience past culture, they use other senses as they feel, touch and in many cases smell objects. Penn Museum in Philadelphia is one of those museums that allow blind visitors to explore by touching. Visitors sanitize their hands before feeling the pieces, which are pre-selected by conservators. When the Overbrook School for the Blind paid a visit to the museum, they had free tours ithat ncluded a classroom lesson on how Egyptians prepared a body for burial. Students jiggled a gelatin mold of the brain — which was removed during the mummification process — and handled facsimiles of relics found in tombs. They also felt ancient linen, smelled scented oils and touched a reproduction of a mummy.

A free cultural heritage and tourism success

Cultural heritage and tourism: who pays for preservation?

October 21, 2013 by Harold Goodwin

Bushman rock art in Kamberg, South Africa. Who ensures its preservation?

The brief answer is no. Many regard access to a nation’s or a community’s heritage attractions as a “Merit good”. The belief is that people should have free, or low cost, access to their heritage as it is theirs, because enjoyment of it contributes to their education, and because there is a public interest in the maintenance of culture. In the UK the major national museums are free to enter; yet some 40% of visitors are internationals who are enjoying a freebie for which they make no contribution as a taxpayer. The British Museum was the UK’s most popular visitor attraction in 2012 – a status which it has enjoyed for the last six years. In 2012 it attracted 5.6 million visitors, 60% of them were international visitors making no contribution to its maintenance.

'Eνα Μουσείο που δεν μπορείτε να επισκεφθείτε - A Museum that you can not visit

'Eνα Μουσείο που δεν μπορείτε να επισκεφθείτε - A Museum that you can not visit

CIA museum

Το μουσείο των μυστικών υπηρεσιών της Αμερικής δεν είναι ανοιχτό στο κοινό καθώς βρίσκεται στο ίδιο κτήριο όπου εργάζονται μυστικοί πράκτορες. Έχει περί τα 16000 εκθέματα, ενδύματα, εργαλεία, έγγραφα, εμβλήματα,όπλα αλλά και αναμνηστικά . Ανάμεσα στα εκθέματα βρίσκεται και το όπλο του Οσάμα Μπιν Λαντεν. Η ιστορία του μουσείου ξεκινά το 1972 με την πρόταση του τότε Διευθύνοντα συμβούλου της Κεντρικής Υπηρεσίας Πληροφοριών William E. Colby. Το μουσείο τελικά συγκροτείται την δεκαετία του 1980 με την παραχώρηση τμήματος του κτηρίου. Αν και η πρόσβαση είναι αδύνατη, στην σελίδα του μουσείου μπορεί κάποιος να περιηγηθεί σε τμήμα της συλλογής.

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The CIA Museum, administered by the Center for the Study of Intelligence, is the primary national archive for the collection, preservation, documentation and exhibition of intelligence artifacts, culture, and history. Because the museum is not open to the public, the CIA Museum develops public exhibitions in partnership with the Presidential Libraries and other major museums and institutions in order to promote a wider understanding of the craft of intelligence and its role in the broader American experience.