Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind

Library Company of Philadelphia

Teresa Jaynes, Gift #4, 2016, silkscreen prints and cherry. Photo by Jennifer McTague. — Teresa Jaynes, *Gift #4*, 2016, silkscreen prints and cherry. Photo by Jennifer McTague.

Recipient

Grant Year 2014

Grant Amount $150,700

Status Completed

Updated May 30, 2023

Artist-in-residence Teresa Jaynes will curate a multisensory exhibition based on the Library Company's extraordinary collection of pre-Braille texts for the visually impaired. The exhibition will include historic objects as well as new works created by Jaynes that visitors will experience via touch, smell, and hearing. Jaynes will collaborate with her Vision Council—advisors who have experienced varying degrees of vision loss at different stages of life—on how to make the exhibition accessible to wide audiences, including the visually impaired. Jaynes is a 1999 Pew Fellow who organized the citywide Philagrafika festival in 2000.

*Additional unrestricted funds are added to each grant for general operating support.*

Primary EventsEvents & Exhibitions

Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind

Apr 4–Oct 21, 2016
Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia

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Supporting Events

Opening Reception for Common Touch: The Art of the Senses in the History of the Blind

Apr 5, 2016
Library Company of Philadelphia, Louise Lux-Sions and Harry Sions Gallery, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia

You Are My Sunshine – A Kind of Love Story

Apr 20, 2016
Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia

Many Blind Rivers: Stories of Consciousness

May 24, 2016
Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia

Common Touch: Talking to the Fingers in the Language of the Eyes

May 17, 2016
Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia

Common Touch: Bridging the Story of Blindness (and Vision Loss) Across Two Centuries

Sep 15, 2016
The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia

Common Touch: Musical Meeting of the Minds

Sep 14, 2016
The Free Library of Philadelphia, Parkway Central Branch, Skyline Room, 4th Floor, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia

uestions of ractice

Interview

On Telling the Stories of the Disabilities Community: Artist Teresa Jaynes, Playwright Suli Holum, Writer Terry Galloway, and Art-Reach's John Orr

Recipient

Library Company of Philadelphia

Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin, The Library Company of Philadelphia is America's oldest cultural institution and was once the largest public library in America, until the Civil War. Its mission is to foster scholarship in and increase public understanding of American history before 1900 by preserving, interpreting, and making available its non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art.

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