by Aldo Grassini.
In 2025, the European Capital of Culture is Nova Gorica a small city settled in Slovenia that is a small country. But this is an event of great value; we must welcome it with true enthusiasm. It is the recognition of quality, regardless of size, and of the value of diversity that puts everyone on the same level giving all the power to assert their being and their qualities.
And accessibility to cultural heritage is a concept parallel to the previous one and it fights for the same values. In terms of numbers, there are smaller realities but holders of the same rights; they claim equal dignity and fair opportunities for presence and participation.
This is the essence of democracy in the relationship between peoples and cultures, but also between the different components of the society.
These premises clearly explain the Omero Museum presence in the Slovenian event and its convinced acceptance of the invitation to offer its own contribution to the organization of a tactile exhibition in the “Goriski Muzey” in Nova Gorica. The discovery of both the cognitive and aesthetic value of tactility, where the Omero Museum is recognized among the protagonists, is the cultural reference for this collaboration, we hope that it represents only a first step. The ability to use touch breaks down a barrier that excludes the visually impaired people from enjoying art and from a social integration which would be unthinkable without authentic cultural integration.
But the tactile approach is not solely a substitute for the visual one. It has its own specificity: it is a different way of knowing and aesthetically appreciating things and art. Using touch to experience the emotion of a different approach to beauty and rediscover what nature offers to everyone and what society makes us forget means, even for those who can see, breaking down a cultural barrier: the same
barrier that excludes the visually impaired people from enjoying art.
In addition to returning to the blind a right belonging to everyone, a tactile museum becomes a great opportunity of recomposing the unity of a public that can include both the blind and the sighted people promoting that deep integration that only culture can develop.
Since several decades, the Omero Museum has been following this path, and it is wonderful that the Goriski Muzey also wants to deepen a research capable of starting a huge reform of museology. For several centuries, thinking that art represents an exclusively visual phenomenon has dominated the world of culture.
Now however, it is being discovered that in front of an artwork what really matters is an experience that can totally involve the subject and bring together all his resources and all his senses, including touch, removing definitely the ostracism it is victim of.