A tactile museum: here’s something new!
The Museo Omero does not forbid touching works of art.
The MO is a museum without any barriers.
In practice, not touching excludes an entire group of people, those who “see” with their hands, i.e. the non-sighted, and the MO restores a right denied to them elsewhere. However, everyone has a sense of touch but a culture that ennobles sight over the other senses has tended to make us forget them.
Each sense has its own nobility; all of them can give pleasure when we are discovering and enjoying the beauty of nature and human intelligence.
Tactile exploration enables us to discover forms by a less-travelled path, even when our eyes are closed. It makes us appreciate the nuances of the surfaces touched, creates a physical relationship with the things we love, eliminates distance and, in a certain sense, blends the subject and the object together.
It makes us understand the difference between touching and caressing and enhances the emotions of an intimate relationship with things.
The Museum has thus eliminated discrimination against the blind who now have the right to enter the magical world of the beauty of art. And the sighted can rediscover one of nature’s gifts that has long been neglected.