Access to Museums: An Invitation from WGBH and the MFA

Kes: I recently decided that in 2011 I am going to add more art to my life, so this is pretty exciting. The e-mail address is mary_watkins@wgbh.org

As a member of New England's cultural community and an individual who has worked to assure that your institution is as inclusive of people with disabilities as possible, you are being invited to help plan an exciting and groundbreaking event that we expect will help advance this commonly held goal.

The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) along with the Museum of Fine Arts has been asked by the Shapiro Family Foundation to organize an event, probably a half-day in late Spring 2011, that will be designed to serve your needs, concerns, questions and challenges as you look to welcome people with disabilities to your facility.

But what are your needs? What kind of event would work for you? Who should attend from your organization and what can we do to assure that key decision-makers are enticed to attend and get real value from the planned event? Should the seminar focus on technology? Funding? Outreach? Awareness-raising? (we suspect we know the answer to these last questions - all of the above!)

This is expected to be an "insiders" event for the museum community, perhaps to be followed eventually by additional activities that focus on and include your stakeholders. But for now, your input is needed to be sure we serve your needs.

Interested? Then join us for a planning call on Tuesday, Jan. 11, at 2pm (we'll set up a conference call with web captioning for anyone who needs it). Don't worry if you can't make the call - we'll take notes and be sure to get your feedback long before the conference agenda is set. Know anyone who you think would be interested? Let us know and we'll reach out. Simply hit reply to this email and let us know you're interested.

Thanks for considering this request - we hope you are as excited about the possibilities as we are.

Larry Goldberg
WGBH - Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM)

Hannah Goodwin
Museum of Fine Arts

Oo! I know the answer to this one!

At the bottom of an e-mail from Alexx was the following automatically generated quote from his quote file:

I know that every time one door closes, another door opens,
but why do these hallways have to be so dark?
[Seen on a Nancy Button,

Answer: the original reference is a Helen Keller quote. I'm not supposed to tell the sighties this for fear of losing my membership in the official blink club, but blind people actually go around turning off the lights just to hear the sighted folks bump into things. It's our petty revenge for when you move the furniture and forget to tell us (yes, I know it is called a footstool but I don't believe that it actually moves of its own volition).