Seeing with the fingers is nothing new to the blind, whose sensitive fingertips “read” the faces of friends as well as the raised dots of Braille texts. But “seeing” works of art with the fingertips is something else, and few people really knew what it could mean until the California Arts Commission organized an exhibition of sculpture for the blind and sent it touring through the state. “It was a whole new realm of experience,” said one blind woman. “All my life I have been touching refrigerators and sinks and dishes and beds—this is the first time I have touched a work of art.”

The 30 pieces in the show (which is just finishing a four-week stand in Sacramento before moving on to San Diego) include an ancient Egyptian portrait statue in granite, a group of Chinese jade animals, a bronze rooster from the Guinea Coast of Africa, Renaissance statuettes, two wooden saints from 16th century Flanders and a 19th century neoclassical Italian marble Venus. None is too large to be held between two hands, and all were selected for the various textures of their surfaces.

Difference in Touch. Since all good sculpture invites touching (and the standard museum rule is always “Don’t touch”), the sighted were as eager as the blind to take advantage of this opportunity. In San Francisco, most of the show’s 45,500 visitors could see, and after a few days, when the patina on the bronzes started wearing off, museum officials had to ask those with sight to refrain from touching. “There’s a big difference between the way blind and sighted people touch things,” said one museum official. “The hands of the blind come down gently and slowly, like butterflies, while sighted people plunk their hands onto an object and rub it.”

There were also differences in what they “saw.” One blind woman, fingering Gerhard Marcks’ Little Fiddler, told a companion: “I can tell he’s playing a musical instrument because he’s tapping his foot.” Her companion had never noticed that detail.

The joy that the show has brought to blind visitors has inspired some serious thinking about works of art created especially for the blind, and Director Kenneth Donahue of the Los Angeles County Museum is considering a show made up of expendable objects in various media whose impact would come from touching rather than seeing them. “With that kind of show,” he says, “the blind would be sharing their experiences with the sighted rather than the usual other way around.”

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