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invitation & barrier
andrew samuel harrison
Preface
At an initial curatorial meeting for Letters for
the Future, an exhibition by Department of Trans-
formation (DOT), I contributed a “Note on Exhibi-
tion Design” for both the DOT team and the Cura-
tor of Brooklyn Public Library (BPL):
“Access as praxis and an important and neces-
sary institutional transformation partly in place
and woefully inadequate.
The works and the exhibition design itself
should embody a ‘being with’ disability by in-
cluding not only audible and visual and touch-
able works, but by making the visual audible,
making the audible haptic, making time ex-
pandable, making comfort and rest not only
possible but readily available. In ways, the
‘commons’ might exist in a world view that still
disqualifies.
There are resources within the New York Pub-
lic Library System we may be able to pull from,
particularly the Andrew Heiskell Braille and
Talking Book Library. There are disability art-
ists and thinkers I can lean on as consultants
where my knowledge and experience is equal-
ly inadequate to the task. This year is the 35th
anniversary of the passage of the Americans
with Disabilities Act. I see this exhibition as an
opportunity to push past the risk management
aspects of ADA enforcement in public buildings
as a case study toward meaningful access in
future DOT endeavors.”
I could only hope for a positive response from the
team–this felt like a risk, a leap, but I was prepared
to put an impassioned, if stumbling, voice behind
it at that first curatorial meeting. The curator of the
library opened the next meeting with a grateful ac-
knowledgement of my note, saying she hoped to
make this an integral element of our conversations.
In follow-up conversations, the other matters of
the exhibition became the primary subject of dis-
cussion. Writing this now, in the days ahead of the
exhibition’s opening, I’ll say that my intention, my
commitment to bring access into our meetings as
an integral point of curation and exhibition design
have at times come to the fore, and at other times,
failed.
In the meantime, this text, whatever it becomes
by the time of the exhibition, will be included in the
exhibition and the Brooklyn Public Library’s collec-
tion as a loanable set of guiding principles toward
accessible exhibition design. Importantly, this text
is provisional, and I’ll acknowledge its perpetually
incomplete state now and in every following ver-
sion or edition. Indeed, as I’ve continued to write,
this has become a refrain. These guidelines and
the principles behind them will change. These will
never make an exhibition accessible for everyone.
If there is one takeaway I wish to offer a reader of
this text, it may be to consider the idea that there
is no “everyone” to accommodate. There are indi-
viduals, there are communities, there are publics,
there are institutions, there are norms, and there
are rules built to be broken.
Access is a way of working, relating, and imag-
ining otherwise. In line with disability justice val-
ues—and in recognition of the limitations of the
Americans with Disabilities Act—this text outlines
baseline conditions and shared commitments for
collaboration. I feel it important to mention the
ADA in the context of its 35th anniversary this year
of 2025 and because this exhibition occurs in a
public building falling under the rules of the ADA.
As mentioned, I entered this curatorial project
with the intention of prototyping how the access
guidelines I’ve received from artists and writers
could be manifested through, for one, an artist
group with my contribution of this as an important
consideration of our practice of art consultation
and exhibition design, but also through a city-wide
institution with resources, experience, and prac-
tical realities my idealism could butt-up against.
Alongside these realities, my inexperience as an
advocate.
The guidelines that follow are neither exhaus-
tive nor complete. This will be an ongoing, living
document, shaped by collective labor and the un-
derstanding that meaningful access is always in
progress, but most importantly, in debt to others’
work, which I do my best to acknowledge. The fol-
lowing guidelines reflect the influence of artists,
thinkers, and organizers whose work has shaped
how we practice access not just as compliance, but
as culture.
I have asked myself and others why I am put-
ting this text together. Not why it’s important,
but why I am writing, considering the depth and
breadth of the texts from which I’ve learnt and
pulled. In my life as a disabled person, I have been
invited into community and aid and accommoda-
tion at various points in my life. I mostly rejected
those invitations, until recently. I may be wrong,
but there is still something I feel in a new sense of
identity, becoming, and community that feels off.
Maybe it is the newness, maybe it’s a flawed abili-
ty to experience joy, or pride. Either way, I can’t be
the only one feeling this way, and this text might
act as an expression of that feeling I struggle to
find within disability studies and disability justice
discourse. Understanding, yearning to learn, and
antagonistic, self-preserving distance.
Acknowledgements:
This attempt to coalesce my thinking, expe-
rience and research into language was written
on the ancestral lands of the Lenape people. The
Lenape Nation, also known as the Lenni-Lenape,
is the indigenous people who have called this land
home for thousands of years. The settler-colonial
project that forcibly retains state sponsored con-
trol of the island of Manahatta is inextricably linked
to the establishment of the normative standards of
race, sex, gender and ability that prevent the return
of this land back to the indigenous peoples from
whom it was taken. This I add to acknowledge a
shared, intersectional struggle.
In addition to the various sources of knowl-
edge and insight whom I’ve included in the text,
I feel it is important to acknowledge my gratitude
and indebtedness to the individual mentors, peers
and other co-conspirators that have supported
my thinking, my writing, my making, and ultimate-
ly have produced the person I am: Department of
Transformation collaborators Prem Krishnamurthy,
Sam Rauch, and Mark Foss, and the Brooklyn Pub-
lic Library Curator of Visual Art Programming, Cora
Fisher; past educators: IV Castellanos, Lan Thao
Lam, Azita Moradkhani, Carrie Yamaoka, Kris Grey,
Cullen Washington, David L. Johnson, Isaiah Madi-
son, Kiyan Williams, Soyoung Yoon, Ariel Goldberg,
Alan Ruiz, Suganda Ghupta, Jonah Groeneboer,
Andrea Geyer, and Catherine Telford Keogh; and
the friends and thinkers that have offered coun-
sel and supported me in various ways since the
outset of my creative practice: Shay Salehi, Devon
Hammer, Ry Van Der Hout, Mark Wilson, JJ Pinck-
ney, Brendan Ginsburg, Asa Jackson, Kira Jackson,
Dathan Kane, Nico Cathcart, Kasey O’Neil, Chanel
Hurt, Nicolás Aguilar, Abel Andrade, Ariel Arakas,
parisa mah, Mari Rio Claros, Victoria Norton, Lola
Carlander, Rose Silberman-Gorn, Gino Romero,
Ashleigh Abbott, Carson Parris, Catherine Dunning,
John Parris, Weston Nicholson, Will Grace, Ethan
Hickerson, Freddy Clark, Kevin Sabo, Samuel Richardson, Troy Montes Michie, Sunaura Taylor, Kevin
Quiles Bonilla, Alex Dolores Salerno, Ezra Benus,
Blair Simmons, Cresa Pugh, Constantina Zavitsa-
nos, Mckenna Goade, Qasim Ali
Hussain, Yeabsera Tabb, Sumaiya Saiyed, Hannah
Bang, Shangari Mwashighadi, Felisa Nguyen, Dan-
ielle Sargeant, Teresa Olds, Spencer Strauss, Sona
Lee, Sam Xing, Faith Henderson, Lain Chen, Dag-
mar Hillel, Hue Huynh, Owen Atkins, Kim Madden,
Dan Atkins; and my parents, Bruce and Kim Harri-
son, and brothers, Steve, Matt and Phil Harrison.
1. Multisensory Exhibition Design
Invitation:
Exhibitions should take the vast range of dis-
ability into account by embodying a “being with
disability,” a phrase inspired by conversations in
disability culture that foreground presence, re-
lation, and mutual aid. Works and environments
should invite multiple forms of sensory engage-
ment. Primary among these should be:
-Making the visual audible
-Making the audible haptic
-Making time-based work expandable or paus-
able
-Prioritizing comfort, softness, and rest through
seating, quiet areas, and flexible pacing
As disability culture activist and performance art-
ist Petra Kuppers writes, disability culture offers
new ways of moving, making, and sensing that
challenge normative time and space.
Barrier:
In a class I took during grad school, I once
heard about an experience witnessed by audio de-
scribers working on a stage play. The users of the
audio aid devices she worked on noted witnessing
their nearby audience-members reacting to the
show differently than they had. Sighted audience
members burst out in laughter, cried, gasped in
shock, but non-sighted audience members found
their audio accompaniment did not elicit those re-
sponses. Something was missing in the audio ex-
perience to make the experience inequitable as a
whole.
One of these audio describers showed previous
work in collaboration with video artists. She takes
special care to use her timing and inflection to
create a more closely shared sensorial experience
for those watching versus listening to the recorded
video performances.
In the case of the stage play, audio description
through headsets were added to an experience de-
signed without the nonvisual audience members; in
the case of the video work, audio description was
recorded to be integral to the video experience.
The tension here for an exhibition designer/cu-
rator exists in the choice of existing works versus
commissioning new works; however, the choice of
works need not be limited to whatever one might
consider fully accessible nor fully multisensory.
2. An Access Doula / Support Roles
Invitation:
An access doula should be designated through-
out exhibition design and curatorial practice
throughout exhibition projects. This role, inspired
by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s framing
of access as care work, may be filled by someone
on staff or a paid collaborator. Access doulas help
hold the porous, relational parts of this work that
are often overlooked or undercompensated. This
person provides:
-A consistent point of contact for access planning
-Emotional and logistical support to the artist and
audience
-A bridge between institutional systems and em-
bodied experience
Barrier:
My experience with this point is centered
around financial barriers. Every staff member costs
something. For Letters for the Future, no access
doula has been put in place. In some ways, my role
within DOT has been to become the point of con-
tact for access planning, and yet this is not my only
role within the group, nor is this position my only
job. At the BPL exhibition, there are volunteers to
rely on, but they will have varying degrees of fa-
miliarity with the space, the show, and the specific
works. The accessibility of those works can differ,
and there might not be enough information to aid
any impairment one could imagine to access those
works. Institutional spaces might have some bud-
get to work with, but this is often not the case for
independent galleries or more DIY setups.
3. Exhibition Space & Physical Access
Invitation:
In the United States, the Americans with Dis-
abilities Act provides for a broad, general accom-
modation for individuals with disabilities. Much
of these border on risk-management on the part
of public buildings, parks, and pathways. In the
case of the exhibition at the central branch of the
Brooklyn Public Library, for which I first began writ-
ing and compiling this guide-of-sorts, issues of
egress were covered by their long-standing poli-
cies compliant with the ADA. In other areas, such
as exhibitions held in galleries throughout New
York City, these same elements of egress and oth-
ers appear rarely considered:
-Ensure step-free access to all areas, including in-
stallation and back-of-house
-Maintain circulation paths (minimum 36”) and
turning space for mobility devices
-Provide seating throughout with varied formats
(arms/no arms, high/low, etc.)
-Avoid overstimulating elements (glare, echo, flash-
ing) or clearly label them
-Offer low-stimulation or quiet zones within the ex-
hibition space
This reflects Amanda Cachia’s call for curating ex-
hibitions that don’t just accommodate access, but
reimagine it as an aesthetic and structural priority.
Barrier:
These expectations assumed by the ADA are
somewhat invisible to a person like me, born after
its passage, therefore having been raised in a Unit-
ed States already affected by its policies. It hasn’t
been so apparent to me, for example, what some-
thing as seemingly ubiquitous as wheelchair ac-
cessibility requires on the part of an artist creating
an installation burdened by an exhibition space.
The space itself has limitations. Questions come
up to slow the process down. With limited time to
first confirm which of the invited artists can par-
ticipate and equally limited time to make curatori-
al decisions about where such works are included,
I am set into a position instantly at odds with the
text I’ve designed.
4. Information & Communication Access
Invitation:
I’ve struggled with this point in this very text,
and in the BPL exhibition that sparked this writ-
ing. What form, as I’m writing this, will it take when
published for the exhibition? What form will the
text in the exhibition take? My decision to forego a
more thoughtful, artfully designed booklet, and in-
stead use larger print and “Hyperlegible” font was
in service of these guidelines. In discussions lead-
ing up to the exhibition thus far, it has been diffi-
cult to negotiate how these points will come into
being:
-Make all wall texts and print materials available in:
-Large print
-Plain language
-Screen-reader-compatible digital formats
-Include alt-text or image descriptions for visual
works
-Provide audio description (recorded or live)
-Caption or transcribe all media and
performances
As nonvisual learner and artist Carmen Papalia as-
serts, access is a creative act—a set of rituals and
relationships that unfold in time and require care,
not just infrastructure.
Barrier:
As the point of contact with an institution put-
ting together the exhibition, with the restraints of
budget and the physical space afforded them as
well as our group, I have not felt pushback exact-
ly, but this is one of the points that, as we read
through them in our access specific meeting, I felt
myself pulling back. I have been aware since be-
fore my initial access pitch that there is a budget
to consider. These points strike me as specifical-
ly budgetary, and atleast once it was suggested
that we wait for someone to ask for increased ac-
cess before we provide something like an in-depth
printed guide in Braille.
5. Public Program Access
Invitation:
Some of these points fall under what the gener-
al public might traditionally think of when consid-
ering disability—namely deafness. Others are more
related to how the public would think of COVID
PPE precautions and other neurodivergent needs:
-All events include ASL interpretation and re-
al-time captioning (CART) with advance planning
-Provide remote access options (e.g., livestream
with captions or Zoom)
-Designate mask-required hours or events for im-
munocompromised participants
-Disclose air quality details and use filtration where
possible
-Provide a quiet room or sensory-friendly zone
during all public programs
Access here means not only entry but belonging—a
term writer, educator, and community organizer
Mia Mingus links to access intimacy, the deep rec-
ognition of access needs as part of loving each
other well.
Barrier:
Many spaces will not be able to offer extra
space for a quiet or sensory room. The way COVID
protocols have relaxed over the past two years, ac-
cessing enough masks for an event can be difficult,
and it starts to have unintentional effects on the
audience: discomfort for some, and worse.
In the case of DOT’s exhibition at BPL, part of
the hope for the exhibition design was to include
“reading room” for visitors to sit and peruse the
texts included in the exhibition. In the end, the
space itself and a lack of budget for furniture dic-
tated there would not be a specifically quiet space;
however, the show is in a library, so there are spac-
es to which one could retreat for some quiet and
some rest.
6. Digital Access
Invitation:
As much as possible, the exhibition should ex-
ist outside of the in-person experience for anyone
who might prefer to experience the exhibition re-
motely, including photos, audio description, written
guides and recordings of visual moments like per-
formances and talks.
-Ensure websites and digital materials are:
-Compatible with screen readers
-Include alt-text for all images
-Captioned and/or transcribed
-Available in plain text upon request
This digital layer of access is inseparable from
physical space—especially for those whose pres-
ence may be remote, mediated, or fluctuating.
Barrier:
Several critical questions arise when consider-
ing accessibility for the show. Are screen readers
available, and how can one effectively craft alt-text
that accurately conveys visual information? Fur-
thermore, what are the precise criteria for content
to be considered plain text, and how might the im-
plementation of these accessibility features alter
the overall experience of the show itself? A signif-
icant challenge lies in determining whether these
resources should be made proactively available,
even before an audience member explicitly re-
quests them. There’s also the concern that if such
accommodations are created, there’s no guarantee
they will actually be utilized, leading to potential-
ly wasted effort and resources. Again, a significant
budgetary issue has arisen.
7. Artist Access & Support
Invitation:
At most galleries and institutions, art handlers
will be employed to install exhibitions. In many
situations, these art handlers would be simply in-
formed of what to do, what to install. In others, the
artist themselves might be expected to perform
this labor. In these cases:
-Allow flexible scheduling for install, walkthroughs,
and events
-Provide access to lifts, tools, stools, and adaptive
equipment
-Accommodate remote participation during install
if needed
-Compensate any access support the artist brings
into the process
This echoes the practices of artists like Christine
Sun Kim, who demand not just inclusion but trans-
formation—recognizing how norms around produc-
tion and participation must shift for disabled art-
ists to work safely and fully.
Barrier:
Many established galleries and institutions use
art handlers, but from my experience, they cannot
be expected to participate with the installation in
the way the artist envisions. These workers are of-
ten underpaid and employed provisionally. At best,
the exhibition would be well planned enough to be
welcomely installed with as much care and inten-
tion as possible. Sometimes, this doesn’t occur,
with both DIY and institutional exhibitions. If we
expect additional support to be included in instal-
lation for the artist that needs that support, it can
be hard to bend the budget for the supporter’s
compensation. Sometimes, particularly with larg-
er institutions like BPL, there are several levels of
staff that will encounter the work, the hanging, the
budgeting, the contracts, and the install plans far
before access support gets involved. At that point,
there may not be an option to consider compensa-
tion for another person.
8. Ethics of Care & Incomplete Work
Invitation:
Somehow this point holds a special weight for
me. In this text, and in exhibitions, many whose
labor are involved do not get acknowledged. The
work done to create an exhibition, from DIY gal-
leries to large institutions involves more people
than are typically recognized. As anyone who has
developed an event of any kind knows, organizing
them involves so much communication and plan-
ning. The community around creating an event for
a public to attend, should be acknowledged. This
text, exhibitions of different scales, performanc-
es, any cultural moment, involves so many people,
and, like a research paper, owes a debt to those in-
volved, even tangentially.
-Publicly acknowledge all access labor and contrib-
utors (interpreters, describers, consultants)
-Include a note in the exhibition and on digital ma-
terials that:
-Access is always incomplete
-Feedback is welcome
-The work is ongoing
As the disability justice collective Sins Invalid re-
minds us, the basis of this movement is people.
We build access not alone, but together—and never
perfectly.
Barrier:
An art exhibition, a written text, a song, hold a
set of expectations. The conceptual framework of
the event can dictate how liberally one can apply
the ability to not complete a work for public audi-
ences. The beauty and openness of crip time al-
lows for lateness, for more time to be asked for
when needed, for works to be included in a show
before they are ready. I see this text in that way;
it is not done, and it may never be completed. In
fact, the barrier to care and incomplete work may
be owned by the creators of the work, but it should,
when relevant to the show still be included, at
times, when its inclusion can be said to be essen-
tial to the show.
Conclusion:
This text remains a living thing—unfinished, but
no longer uncertain. What began as a note for an
exhibition has become a framework for working
within and against the limitations that shape cul-
tural production. The work of access, like the work
of art, is iterative: it expands where resources allow
and contracts where they don’t, but it continues.
To advocate for access within an institution means
also learning to live with the limits of its budget, its
policies, and its pace. These are not excuses, but
conditions—realities that determine what can be
made possible in any given moment.
Still, I believe something meaningful can hap-
pen within those constraints. Each conversation,
each small adjustment, each reallocation of care or
time is part of the work. Access need not depend
on abundance; it depends on relation. When I have
felt the strain between what I hoped for and what
could be funded, I have tried to hold onto this dis-
tinction—to remember that the gesture of trying, of
showing up imperfectly, still matters. Limitations
expose possibilities.
If this text offers anything, it may be a remind-
er that access is not achieved through completion
but through persistence. Its principles will change
as I will, shaped by new collaborators, new insti-
tutional contexts, and new urgencies. What I hope
remains is a shared sense that access is not an
extra—something to be afforded when budgets al-
low—but a way of being with others that gives form
to care itself.
This document is provisional, yes, but it is also
a commitment: to keep reworking the space be-
tween invitation and barrier until they can coexist
without contradiction.
Endnote: Lineages
This text reflects and owes much to the work of:
-Carolyn Lazard, Accessibility in the Arts:
A Promise and a Practice
-Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work
and The Future is Disabled
-Amanda Cachia, The Agency of Access, and cura-
torial and scholarly work on disability aesthetics
-I wanna be with you everywhere, artist collective
-Jerron Herman
-Park McArthur
-Constantina Zavitsanos
-Finnegan Shannon
-Alex Dolores Salerno
-Carmen Papalia, Open Access and perfor-
mance-based access strategies, “An Accessibility
Manifesto for the Arts”
-Mia Mingus, “Access Intimacy”
-Petra Kuppers, Disability Culture and Community
Performance
-Sins Invalid, Skin, Tooth, and Bone
-Christine Sun Kim, on Deaf time, translation, and
resistance
-Johanna Hedva, How To Tell When We Will Die
-David Gissen, The Architecture of Disability
-Rosemarie Garland Thomson
-Eli Clare, Brilliant Imperfection
And many unnamed community members whose
access labor is unrecorded but deeply felt <3