Beyond the Visual: Blindness and Expanded Sculpture

Project timeline and budget

Project duration: July 2023 – July 2026
Value: £250,000
Funded by: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

Project summary

Beyond the Visual is a 3-year groundbreaking research project. It is a collaboration between Chelsea College of Arts, the Henry Moore Institute and Shape Arts – the UK’s leading disability-led arts organisation.

The project is dedicated to challenging the dominance of sight in the making and appreciation of contemporary sculpture. It is transforming how museums and galleries engage blind and partially blind visitors. The project involves public participation in various activities including a research season, conference and series of exhibition-related events.

In November 2025, the research culminates with the UK’s first major sculpture exhibition where blind and partially blind practitioners are central to the curatorial process. They also make up the majority of the exhibiters. The exhibition challenges conventional curatorial practice by encouraging visitors to actively engage with all the works, such as through touch, sound or vibration.

The image shows a splayed left hand touching a bronze plate upon which are lines of single black letters that are recessed into the plate. The letters are from a Snellen eye test chart and reduce in size with the larger letters being at the top and the smaller at the bottom. — **Once I Saw It All, Dr Aaron McPeake (2022) | Photograph: Ken Wilder**

Project aims and approach

Aims

Investigate how the shift in aesthetic engagement afforded by expanded forms of sculpture potentially opens up new multi-sensory possibilities for engaging a blind and partially sighted audience, while enhancing the experience of a sighted audience.
Explore how new types of contemporary sculpture can create more ways for blind and partially blind people to experience art using different senses, while enhancing the experience of a sighted audience.
Translate academic research around issues of non-sighted modes of beholding art into tangible changes that impact directly upon gallery and museum design, policy and curatorial practice.

Approach

The project builds on an earlier AHRC funded research network, Beyond the Visual: Non-Sighted Modes of Engaging Art. This concluded in a 2-day symposium at the Wellcome Collection, London.
The second iteration of Beyond the Visual focuses on contemporary sculpture. This has led to an exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute.
A book Beyond the Visual: Multisensory Modes of Beholding Art (UCL Press) will be published to accompany the exhibition.

Research outputs

Exhibition

Beyond the Visual at the Henry Moore Institute, November 2025 – March 2026.

Publication

Ken Wilder and Aaron McPeake (eds). Beyond the Visual: Multisensory Modes of Beholding Art. London: UCL Press (publication date 21 August 2025).

Impact

Innovative curation

Beyond the Visual presents a new model of accessible artworks that are designed to be experienced through touch, sound and vibration. Inclusion is embedded from the start. It will redefine how museums engage with disabled audiences; not as an afterthought or accommodation of needs, but as an integral part of the creative and curatorial process.

Institutional change

The Beyond the Visual project is affecting tangible institutional change, shaping global policy and practice. The research has already had a significant impact on how exhibitions are curated at the Henry Moore Institute. Changes include touch tours and collaborative approaches to audio description in all exhibitions, new accessible signage and extensive staff training in inclusive curatorial methods.

Significant advisory roles

Wilder and McPeake were invited to be advisors to the Wellcome Collection for its groundbreaking In Plain Sight exhibition. They were also on the advisory panel for the AHRC-funded The Sensational Museum project.

Collaboration and publication

Multidisciplinary network

Wilder and McPeake have built a multidisciplinary network exploring how contemporary art – sculpture, installation, sound, performance and participatory art – can better engage blind audiences.

The project was built on a collaborative approach to creating exhibitions and involved lots of public engagement activities. The project investigators worked closely with partner organisations, including:

Henry Moore Institute
Tate
The DisOrdinary Architecture Project
Shape Arts
VocalEyes
Wellcome Collection.

Open-access book

The exhibition at the Henry Moore Institute is accompanied by a major, 23 chapter open-access book, Beyond the Visual: Multisensory Modes of Beholding Art, published by UCL Press, co-edited by Wilder and McPeake. It features contributions from the multidisciplinary network generated through the research.

The book features contributions from the multidisciplinary network generated through the research. It will become a definitive text for Blindness Arts and more widely for Critical Disabilities Studies, amplifying the research’s reach. The book offers a new standard for inclusive arts policy and practice globally.

Project team

Professor Ken Wilder, Principal Investigator, UAL Professor of Aesthetics
Website: Ken Wilder

Dr Aaron McPeake, Co-Investigator
Website: Aaron McPeake

Dr Clare O’Dowd, Research Curator, Henry Moore Institute

Partners

Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
- Laurence Sillars, Head of the Henry Moore Institute
- Clare O’Dowd, Research Curator, Henry Moore Institute
Shape Arts – Jeff Rowlings, Head of Programme

Advisory Board

Laurie Britton Newell, Senior Curator, Wellcome Collection
Dr Alison Eardley, University of Westminster
David Johnson, Artist
Professor Georgina Kleege, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley
Professor Hannah Thompson, Royal Holloway, University of London

Further information

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