How can you enable a colour-blind visitor to experience colour?
The Centraal Museum Utrecht wants to enable visitors with colour blindness to experience colour in exhibitions just as the artist intended. That’s why the museum, in association with Enchroma, can now provide these visitors with a special pair of glasses.
One in twelve men and one in two hundred women are colour blind. That comes to around 300 million people worldwide. Colour blindness is therefore very common. Using glasses developed by EnChroma in America, the Centraal Museum Utrecht aims to make art more accessible to these people as well.
EnChroma glasses are suitable for red-green colour blindness. Red-green colour blindness can be broken down into two main types (Protan and Deutan) and degrees. Accordingly, visitors will experience a greater or lesser effect; 20% experience a strong effect, 20% experience a minor effect and the other 60% somewhere in between the two.
Down to business
The Centraal Museum bought several pairs of EnChroma glasses and has written comprehensive instructions for the volunteers who lend them to visitors. In addition, a colour-blindness test was launched on the website. The Centraal Museum has called in the help of both EnChroma itself and Unique Opticians, which sell the glasses in the Netherlands. This collaboration has helped deepen our knowledge of colour blindness. Museum staff are now able to provide visitors with information about colour blindness and how to use the glasses. Although it involved more work than had been anticipated, the museum can now respond effectively to people with colour blindness, and explain how they can get the most out of their visit.
How did visitors with colour blindness find using the glasses?
The museum worked with a test group on this project. The glasses gave all eight participants from this group an extraordinary experience. Their initial reactions were recorded on film (see below). Due to the range of results experienced among the participants, the museum has purchased five different versions of the glasses, each suitable for a specific type of colour blindness, and indoor or outdoor use. The project was launched during Jessica Stockholder’s Stuff Matters exhibition, in which colour plays a key role. The museum will continue to offer these glasses after the exhibition comes to an end. Initial reactions among visitors have been positive and encouraging.
More information and partners
For more information about this project, please visit the Centraal Museum website.
The Centraal Museum Utrecht is extremely grateful to EnChroma, Unique Opticians and the test group for their advice.
The concept came into being thanks to Sunshine and Sausages, in association with Lesley Moore and Rogier Brood.