Art Museum Experience

Located in Seattle Washington, the Frye Art Museum opened in 1952. The creators, Charles and Emma Frye, were early-twentieth century Seattle business leaders and art collectors who made the museum what it is today. The 18,000 square foot space contains pieces from the Frye Founding collection as well as different exhibitions hosted at various times. Upon visiting the museum, there was an exhibit called 36 Chambers, the title of James Joyce’s first series of poems. This particular exhibit helps to continue the Frye Museums commitment to the “citizen curator” by inviting staff members to choose works of art from the Founding Collection based on James Joyce’s poems in 36 Chambers.

            The overall design of this museum is simple. Walking into the museums lobby, you immediately pass a gift store and enter the gallery portion of the space. This gallery space is divided into massive rooms with very tall ceilings. The expansiveness of the gallery’s rooms allows the visitors to enjoy the pieces from different angles and distances. Benches were placed in the center of these rooms, seating up to 8 people, and were the only form of seating offered in the space. This encouraged people to continue to move through the rooms and also provided a space to rest your feet and take in the art. Each exhibit usually has a description of what the exhibit is displaying, helping guests understand the shows. The paintings are spaced out nicely; far enough for guests who are viewing one piece wont bother another guest viewing another piece. The art is hung at an average eye level. The design of the space encourages the best possible viewing experience of the artwork. The walls on which the art is hung were mostly white throughout the museum although in the 36 Chambers exhibit, the walls were painted lilac and the lighting was dimmer than in the other spaces. The spaces with white walls had track lighting on the ceiling, which was the only source of light in the space. They were placed to prevent glare and made the viewing very pleasant. The white walls, light hardwood floors and soft light made the space calming and neutral. In the 36 Chambers exhibit with lilac walls, the art was mounted in thick frames to separate them from the colored walls, emphasizing the artwork.

            My visit to the Frye Art Museum was enjoyable in that I was able to see some incredible pieces of art as well as learn about the layout and structure of a popular, public museum. This will help me in my design for my next project and in future projects.

Impaired Vision Experience

I participated in a temporary-impairment experience two weeks ago to be able to have a sense of what diminished vision capacity is like for potential vision impaired clients. After completing a set of tasks while wearing vision-obscuring glasses, I was able to better understand the daily life of a visually impaired person. Looking through a plastic bag represented 20/60 vision. A person with this eye site is still able to legally drive during the day. While looking through the bag, I briefly glanced at a nearby newspaper. The writing on the page was blurry and hard to read, although the bigger the text, the easier it was to see. For example, titles could be read while the smaller text was blurry and difficult to see. Next, we folded the plastic bag in half, creating a total of 4 layers to look through. This represented being legally blind. Once looking through the plastic layers, it was extremely hard to see anything. I was only able to see colors and color changes as well as the shapes and outlines of objects such as people. The lights in the room were helpful for direction and way finding purposes. Next, I looked through a vision simulator, a tool that allowed me to gain a basic impression of the effects of several kinds of vision loss. The first type of vision loss was central vision. Here, the middle of my vision was blocked and forced me to turn my head in order to see what I wanted. Loss of parts vision loss gave a fuzzy and distorted view, sometimes making me see double. The tunnel vision part also forced me to move my head around in order to see everything, giving me a limited amount of vision. The last type of vision loss was completely blind. There was no vision, everything was dark. The next exercise was to put on a pair of sunglasses smeared with a layer petroleum jelly, giving off a blurry vision. Walking around our campus book store, using the elevators and stairs, and using the ATM machine while wearing the glasses turned out to be a hard feat. It was hard to see signs and read the writing on descriptions around the building and at the ATM. To help people see and identify objects, it would be helpful to use high contrasting colors and to use brighter colors on important pieces, like the card acceptor at the ATM machine. Hand rails for the stairs are helpful as well as the sand paper like strips on the edges of the steps in order to help a visually blind safely get down the staircase. After participating in this experience, I have learned a few helpful ideas to create a safe and accommodating place for a visually impaired person.

Normal Vision

Looking Through the Plastic; 20/60 Vision, Legally Able to Drive