19.10.2013
White Cane Day in the Great Gallery of the Central Military Club
Within the exhibition "La Grande Iza by Vlaho Bukovac" today at the Great Gallery of the Central Military Club the World Blind Day and the "White Cane Day" was marked. It is an event that is held with a view to indicate to the general public about a number of problems that hinder social inclusion of the blind and visually impaired persons.Tactile segment of the exhibition is just a part of the multi-year project of the Memorial collection entitled "Touch and Feel". This time the idea behind it was to enable visually impaired people with the help of touch and sound to experience in a certain way a major work of academic painting from the late 19th century. "La Grande Iza" was presented to them through five A4 tactile diagrams presenting Bukovac's work – explaining the composition, depth, perspective, and even colour. The painting was additionally described through the story by Milica Orlovic Cobanov, and for those visitors who were not able to come today, an audio guide will be provided until the end of the exhibition – 2nd November.
"I had opportunity to see tactile pictures only in some international journals. The first time that I saw a display like this in our country was two years ago, when the Memorial Collection was exhibited in this same gallery. I think this is a great idea; especially since we do not have that culture. Nobody works on that with the blind children from the beginning of, and not even later", Nedeljka Lozajic said, adding the suggestions how to make the display even clearer to the blind and visually impaired persons.Tihomir Nikolic also expressed his pleasure making also some remarks: "The most common dilemma with relief representation is shall we present only the most important things or shall we go into detail. You cannot present everything to the blind, because then they will not see anything. And there are so many details. However, I think that such a meeting is real pleasure for us. It is not so important that not everything is available to me, but what is more important it is that some people made some efforts to bring an artwork closer to me, and it is not easy at all. Such a beautiful story means a lot to a blind man."
