So what happens when we design cultural spaces honouring the full range of human learning capacities?<\/p>\n
Touch reveals what eyes miss<\/p>\n
My exhibition includes bronze reliefs visitors can touch while viewing corresponding paintings. This simple addition reveals artistic knowledge that visual observation alone cannot provide.<\/p>\n
Take a moment I witnessed with the work The Weight of Connection, where a child placed her hands on reliefs while looking at paintings. <\/p>\n
These bronze sculptures translate semi-abstract paintings into three-dimensional form, but with a twist. What appears to recede in the painting might actually protrude in the bronze relief. <\/p>\n
Bronze sculptures translate semi-abstract paintings into three-dimensional form. \u201cThis looks like the background, but it feels raised,\u201d she said, as her fingers traced raised areas that appeared sunken in the painting. Suddenly she had to work harder to understand what was actually happening, comparing what her eyes told her with what her hands discovered. <\/p>\n This is spatial reasoning<\/a> in action: understanding emerging not from a single sense, but from reconciling conflicting information<\/a>.<\/p>\n The exhibition\u2019s large playable sculpture, Ludic Folly, transforms semi-abstract figurative forms into an interactive adventure. Visitors climb, rest and navigate space. I repeatedly observe children and adults having \u201caha moments\u201d as physical position fundamentally changes their understanding of sculptural forms.<\/p>\n My research<\/a> has shown children naturally learn by building foam compositions on this interactive sculpture, stacking geometric shapes while balancing on curved surfaces. <\/p>\n Children naturally learn by building foam compositions on this interactive sculpture. I\u2019ve watched them discover triangular forms won\u2019t balance the same way rectangular ones do, and weight distribution changes everything. Their whole body becomes part of the learning process. <\/p>\n When children build these compositions together, they don\u2019t just absorb information, they negotiate what works. I\u2019ve seen two kids argue about whether a foam cube should go \u201con top or underneath\u201d, then test both options, their hands and bodies providing immediate feedback about balance and stability. <\/p>\n When foam structures topple over in Ludic Folly, children don\u2019t see catastrophe, they see information. \u201cOh, it needs more support here,\u201d one child told me after her tower collapsed, immediately rebuilding with a wider base. <\/p>\n Embracing risk<\/p>\n My research<\/a> explores a concerning pattern: students from highly supervised, risk-averse childhoods often struggle with creative risk-taking in young adulthood. Physical risks in early childhood build resilience, enabling later intellectual and creative risks.<\/p>\n Museums maintaining \u201clook but don\u2019t touch\u201d policies aren\u2019t just being conservative. They\u2019re reinforcing educational approaches that produce passive, risk-averse learners precisely when society increasingly needs creative problem-solvers<\/a>. <\/p>\n When children in Ludic Folly climb, balance and build structures that might fall, they\u2019re developing both physical confidence and intellectual courage.<\/p>\n When children play in Ludic Folly they\u2019re developing both physical confidence and intellectual courage. In the real world, we never rely on just our eyes. When you\u2019re cooking, you\u2019re listening to the sizzle, feeling the heat, smelling when something\u2019s ready, tasting as you go. When you\u2019re fixing something, your hands tell you as much as your eyes do. <\/p>\n Yet, somehow, we\u2019ve convinced ourselves that in museums learning should happen only through looking.<\/p>\n A path forward<\/p>\n Cultural institutions can implement embodied learning approaches without major infrastructure changes. They can:<\/p>\n allow visitors to explore exhibitions with their hands, providing various textures, weights and temperatures for visitors to manipulate while studying artworks<\/p>\n design exhibitions requiring physical navigation and multiple viewpoints, rather than static observation<\/p>\n create spaces where visitors build, arrange and problem-solve together using loose parts or modular elements<\/p>\n allow visitors to handle tools, materials or work-in-progress pieces revealing artistic processes typically hidden behind finished works.<\/p>\n Throughout my exhibition, these bronze reliefs and the large playable sculpture contain \u201cembodied knowledge\u201d \u2013 understanding existing only through physical creation and accessible only through physical engagement. This isn\u2019t secondary information; it\u2019s primary artistic knowledge completely inaccessible through visual observation alone.<\/p>\n Just like artists, children build knowledge in their bodies<\/a>. The acquisition of tacit knowledge is a deeply immersive process. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/file-20250825-56-3t2i1o.png\")
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\n Maja Baska Photography<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/file-20250825-56-jgzp2h.jpeg\")
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\n Maja Baska Photography<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/file-20250825-64-d0b8xl.jpeg\")
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\n Maja Baska Photography<\/p>\n
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