Curating The Active Power of Touch
The Active Power of Touch opens soon! My new exhibit celebrates the richness of touch in artistic experience—whether through sculpture, raised-line compositions, or mixed media pieces. The artists who submitted pieces for my show work in diverse media such as clay, metal, folded or textured paper, plaster, stone, textiles, and wood. The artworks explore the […]
The Power of Braille Touches Lives: Celebrating Braille Literacy Month
Braille is a powerful tool for literacy and independence that has transformed the lives of blind people around the world. Both print and Braille are codes that represent letters that are combined into words and sentences. Braille letters are formed with a combination of dots, and print letters are formed with lines and shapes. Each […]
The promise and the pitfalls of AI-generated Image Descriptions
Sometimes AI can describe images correctly, but other times it makes mistakes. We all share content online, making each of us a content creator. By presenting information through both text and images, creators can connect with a wider audience. Providing text descriptions of images makes content in documents, presentations, websites and social media posts accessible […]
Learning About Things Through Touch
Models are essential tools for understanding things that are too large, too small, or too fragile to touch. Three-dimensional models help blind people learn about objects through touch. Manipulating a physical object engages our brains more than reading text or listening to a lecture. When sighted people can both see and touch a model, they […]
Learning About Places Through Touch
The Importance of Tactile Maps for Blind People Growing up as the only blind child in a school full of sighted children, I had fewer opportunities to explore tactile maps by touch than they had to look at visual maps. I learned that some tactile maps were created by my parents, and others were found […]
Call for Artists: The Active Power of Touch
The Active Power of Touch, Hosted at The Peale, Baltimore’s Community Museum | April 2026 The Peale Museum invites artists from the greater Baltimore region to apply for inclusion in The Active Power of Touch, a unique exhibition focused on tactile artworks. This groundbreaking show will foreground the richness of touch in artistic experience—whether through sculpture, […]
Creating Tactile Art
Art can engage both the senses of touch and vision, depending on the materials used and the way that it is created. There are many resources about visual characteristics of art, but artists do not receive training to produce tactile art that is enjoyable to touch. I am writing this post as a resource for […]
2024 Year In Review
The highlight of 2024 was the launch of a new exhibit. Dr. Bernard Means and I co-curated The Founding Fossils exhibit at the Peale Museum. Founding Fossils explains the surprising role that archaeology played in the understanding of species extinction in America as the United States became an independent country. We designed the Founding Fossils […]
Multisensory Experiences at a Historic Site
“I met Cheryl while working on a grant project aimed at increasing the capacity of historic sites to create rich, sensory-based interpretive experiences that are accessible to visitors with disabilities. We began collaborating on exhibition design, interpretive components, and digital resources for a new exhibit at Fort Ticonderoga. Cheryl provided best-practice resources and staff training […]