At most art museums, viewers are expected to follow a basic rule: “Look but don’t touch.” But that’s not the case at the Sainsbury Centre in the United Kingdom. Curators there recently launched a new program that invites museumgoers to get up close and personal with the art. That includes hugging Henry Moore’s 1932 sculpture Mother and Child, shown above.
Visitors to the center listen to an audio tour narrated by the museum’s director, Jago Cooper. His voice encourages them not just to view Moore’s sculpture but to embrace it! They’re asked to make eye contact with the mother figure, close their eyes, and think of their earliest memory of being held as a child. “That feeling within you, that feeling of protection, is what Henry was trying to create with this work,” the audio explains.
The exercise aims to help visitors realize that art is an emotional state of mind, an idea that Moore himself seemed to agree with. Cooper says there’s video footage of the artist telling one of the center’s founders that anyone who thinks they understand his art without touching it doesn’t know anything about sculpture.
Usually museums discourage visitors from handling art because oils and dirt on people’s hands can damage the work. People could also accidentally scratch or break the art. Cooper acknowledges that allowing people to physically interact with art must be done on a case-by-case basis. “Lots of works of art aren’t designed to [be touched],” he says. In those instances, the curators invite visitors to engage with the art in other nontraditional ways. That includes dancing with 1,200-year-old Tang Dynasty figures and lying in a hammock while telling a secret to a 1948 portrait by Alberto Giacometti.
“By letting go of convention, you can open up and connect with art in a much more creative way,” says Cooper.