Encouragement to touch, Braille signs, sign language, games: the Louvre Museum is opening a new multisensory space from Thursday, dedicated to the discovery of sculpture by all audiences. This new “educational and inclusive” space of 80 m2, visited by AFP on Wednesday, is located under the painting galleries which house Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It was designed on the basis of the museum’s very first “tactile gallery”, created in 1995 to make the museum more accessible to the visually impaired public, at the heart of the sculpture department, explained Sophie Hervet, head of the graphic mediation department. and digital.
“We decided to renew the concept by giving general keys to understanding to visitors to answer the questions they ask themselves in the museum space,” explained Stéphanie Deschamps-Tan, chief curator in the sculpture department. Casts to touch, Braille labels, sign language tours, stories of works to listen to, audio descriptions, tactile plaques (marble, bronze) as well as supports allowing manipulations allow all audiences to discover and understand Middle Age sculpture Age in the 19th century.
Clay, marble, wood, plaster… The materials and their natural environments, the sculptor’s workshop and the functions of the sculpted works as well as the tools used to create them are thus presented. Louis touching them.