Global Accessibility 

Morgan Hansen, A. Kasteyev Museum of the Arts, Spring 2020

  While interning at the A. Kasteyev Museum of the Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Flagship Program, I had the opportunity to learn more about the inner workings in the museum and various ongoing projects.. One of the most interesting things I learned about, is an ongoing project designed to increase accessibility for visually impaired museum visitors. Visually impaired visitors can now experience the art tactilely through plaster casts of preexisting works of art. Furthermore, the museum provides textile examples for visually impaired visitors in the Decorative and Applied Arts hall. This got me interested in accessibility, and what that looks like in a museum setting. So, I looked deeper by comparing two museums I, as a UCLA student, was familiar with - the A. Kasteyev Museum of the Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Hammer Museum. 

I found that the museums were similar in certain respects - both were fairly affordable, both had various accessibility options for physical disabilities, however linguistic accessibility contrasted wildly between the two museums. At the A. Kasteyev Museum of the Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan, information was available in, at minimum, two languages - Russian and Kazakh, with plans to create audio descriptions in other languages. The Kasteyev Museum also provides information for some of the permanent exhibitions in English, and their website is now also available in Russian, Kazakh, and (with some translation work by me) English. The newest step towards linguistic accessibility accompanies the new plaster casts in the form of Braille translations. The Hammer Museum only has information available on its website in English - and while one could argue that in the U.S., English is the lingua franca, it would be remiss not to account for the populations in the Los Angeles area that do speak other languages, as 59% of the Los Angeles population speaks a language other than English in the home. Alternatively, the Hammer Museum does provide assistive listening devices for hard of hearing and will arrange for further materials for visitors who contact the museum beforehand.
Both museums are actively working to create new ways to accommodate visitors. In the future I think an entirely different museum experience will take form - one that is conducive to universal visitation regardless of one’s ability. Through my internship at the A. Kasteyev Museum of the Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan, I was able to expand my understanding of what accessibility looks like (and learn a lot of new words in Russian!).

Tactile and Braille support for the visually impaired at the A. Kasteyev Museum of the Arts.

Photo courtesy of Morgan Hansen.