Reflexions and Insights from the Course
By studying the concept of “Access-centered Practice” (Fazeli and MacBride, 2025) through course content and reading materials, as Fazeli and MacBride suggest, it is not merely about considering the so-called normal audience. Access is not an additional service but the starting point of curation. We need to actively break the preconception of the “normal” audience and proactively pay attention to how audiences with different physical, cognitive, and emotional conditions participate in curation, providing multi-sensory and multi-rhythmic experiences. From the perspective of Anti-ableism, it is not only an ethical stance but also a specific spatial design strategy. It opposes exhibition designs based on the “normal body/cognition” standard, such as assuming that all visitors can stand to view the exhibition or understand complex texts, and incorporates diverse audiences into our considerations. In our own exhibitions, we can implement access designs, such as setting up reading areas, adding carpets to enhance touch and sound, providing mirrors to increase interactivity, and enabling multi-sensory participation through touch and physical engagement beyond visual perception. Access is also part of the spatial structure design, and we can provide sufficient seating, clear viewing paths, accessible entrance, and low-stimulation areas in the exhibition to ensure that visitors receive respect and a comfortable viewing experience.
The “Means Without Ends” concept describes an exhibition not as a pursuit of a final outcome but as an ongoing process, where the process itself is more significant than the result. An exhibition is not a static, one-off product but a dynamic process involving the curator, the audience, and others that continuously evolves. Therefore, in my personal exhibitions, the feedback and emotional expressions of the audience have also become part of the exhibition content. At the end of the exhibition, a message board for the audience was set up. As the audience flows in and participates, the content on the message board is constantly added to and changes, demonstrating the exhibition’s continuity through audience interaction. “Disability time is not about making the bodies and minds of people with disabilities adapt to time, but about making time adapt to the bodies and minds of people with disabilities (Samuels, 2017).” The exhibition aligns with the concept of “crip time,” allowing slow, non-linear engagement with invisible emotional experiences. The exhibition refuses to transform women’s experiences into consumable stories, but instead invites the audience to think together and establish a deeper connection.
Through studying the course material and reflecting on it, it became clear that exhibitions are not merely about displaying content; they should also consider how different people engage with and experience them. An exhibition is not a fixed outcome, but rather an ongoing process of development shaped together by curators and audiences.
Through the study of Disability Arts Online’s online gallery in class, it is not just an ordinary online exhibition hall; it is an exhibition hall designed for people with “different bodies and cognitive methods” to experience. “Access is embedded, not added.” The exhibition also includes visual paths, auditory paths, and simplified reading paths. Its related curatorial methods can be integrated into my personal curatorial content: adding audio guides, sign language videos, spatial browsing, introduction of the works (descriptions of the works/feelings of the atmosphere/emotions of the artist background information…), combined with visual descriptions, for multi-sensory narration; through easy-read text to provide a simple introduction of the works, providing one sentence of information, along with suggested illustrations, to make it easy for the audience to understand the content of the works at a glance. Through the exhibition, accessibility is transformed from an additional service to the curatorial structure itself.
References：
Taraneh Fazeli, and Cannach MacBride. “MEANS WITHOUT ENDS: LEARNING HOW TO LIVE OTHERWISE THROUGH ACCESS-CENTERED PRACTICE.” In As for Protocols, edited by Re’al Christian, Carin Kuoni, and Eriola Pira, 120. Amherst College Press, 2025.
Samuels, E., 2017. Six ways of looking at crip time. Disability studies quarterly, 37(3).
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