Tempted to touch: The history of the tactile art gallery for the blind and non-blind

The article reconstructs the epistemic and institutional milestones in the history of the tactile art gallery analytically, critically and in an international perspective. Tactile art galleries are heterotopias within the functional unit of the museum. They suspend the founding paradigm of these institutions by breaking away from ocularcentrism and liberating their objects for haptic experience. The first tactile art galleries were created in the early 1960s in the United States against the backdrop of the disability rights movement. They were designed for blind and visually disabled people, but were also accessible to non-blind visitors. After outlining the preconditions for the establishment of tactile museum programmes, the article focuses on influential extra-institutional initiatives and the different approaches adopted in the first permanent museum tactile galleries. In the process, the history of the tactile art gallery is linked to contemporary art historical phenomena as well as to the methodology of art historiography.