My Turn: An unusual gallery tour opened my eyes

I am retired now, but I used to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. I was a lecturer in the Department of Education and I conducted gallery talks and tours. I knew the museum very well and liked talking about the works I knew and admired.

One day I was asked to do a favor. A visitor who was blind was waiting for a tour, but the assigned lecturer had not arrived. In her request for a guided tour, the woman had indicated that she was blind from birth, and she had never had a tour of our museum. I was hesitant, since I had never guided a tour for a blind person, but I could not resist my desire to describe and talk about my favorite works.

The visitor was a lovely middle-aged woman who was thrilled to be in the museum. I explained to her that the first work I selected for her tour was far from where we were, but she said she was very excited to have the opportunity to “see” so much of the museum before we arrived at our first official stop.

She grabbed my arm and said, “Let’s go.”

As we went from one gallery to the next, the visitor asked me about the shape of each room, the color of the walls and the ceiling, the lighting and, of course, about the art that was exhibited in each room, as well as other things.

As I concentrated on responding to her questions, I realized, to my surprise, that I was looking at things that I had never seen or thought about before, and I began enjoying every minute of this woman's questions.

We finally arrived at my first selected painting, Peter Paul Rubens’ “Rubens, Helena Fourment, and Their Son Frans” — a favorite. After explaining the general layout of the gallery, I began describing the content of the painting in general terms. This was all she needed to begin enthusiastically asking me a million questions.

With her questions, I was astounded to find, she was guiding me over every inch of the canvas. Her questions sometimes threw me off; but they helped me see so many details I had never seen before. For example, she wanted to know if I could see the sky above the figures’ heads. When I looked at the painting, I noticed for the first time that the sky was obscured by a garden pergola. She also inquired about the time of year depicted in the painting. First, I thought it was impossible to respond, but I looked back at the painting and noticed early summer roses climbing the pergola. She then wondered aloud whether the artist had been able to depict the aroma of the roses. This visitor inquired about things nobody had ever asked me — and I had not thought about either.

We talked about every detail of the work: the colors, the fabrics, the brushwork and so much more. By the time I looked at my watch, two hours had gone by. We had only made the first stop of my planned tour, but we both had seen so much. The woman seemed satisfied with the tour, and she was making plans to return to the museum to see more. I was thrilled because thanks to this visitor I had been able to truly see a favorite painting for the first time.

Inés Powell,

Sea Cliff