From the Louvre Museum to the Museum of Macedonia In touch with the classical art – an exhibition for everyone The exhibition “In touch with the classical art”, from the Louvre Museum in Paris was opened in the Museum of Macedonia in Skopje on 21st September, aimed, above all at the blind and people with impaired vision, but also at everyone who wants to touch the exhibited sculptures and relief. The official opening was a particular experience where a lot of people were present and there was an appropriate translation for the deaf-mute. With the help from specially, for this occasion, set access ramps and rubber belts on the floor, the access to the exhibits that present a significant segment in the history of art in the world was enabled to everyone. Everyone had an opportunity to touch the exhibited copies of sculptures and relief and they did it with great pleasure. This specific presentation with four sculptures that rotate and the photographs on the wall, borrowed from the Tiphology Center from Zagreb, enables the blind and the people with impaired vision to get the necessary idea about the form, size, the beauty of sculptures and relief. The legends under the exhibits have been written in Braille and another issue of the existing catalogue is to be printed in this system of printing. “The exhibition ‘Touch with the classical period’ opens the opportunities for new aspects of presentation of cultural heritage, enabling big esthetic pleasure to the art lovers, comparative on a perceptive plan. The new method of exhibition with getting familiar with the motive of the artistic work, through reproduction, with touch wakes the subtlest basic values of the work. This is the best way for popularization of creation through masterpieces of the past, touched in the present time, united with immediate love towards beauty. The Museum of Macedonia, within its strives for complete ‘opening of the museum gates’ for the citizens, has been emphasizing the need for presentation of this exhibition, tactile by its character since the very beginning. The human dimension of the concept of the exhibition increases its meaning and value, reminding of the universal language of art, which does not tell between, nor categorize its consumers” – stated at the opening the director of the Museum of Macedonia, Gordan Nikolov. Before being presented in Skopje, the traveling exhibition visited Italy, Croatia and Serbia and its presentation in Greece is being negotiated. The visitors had an opportunity to touch and see the copies of one of the most copied classical pieces “Aphrodite from Milos”, as well as the mould for their creation; copies of “Nymph with a shell”; “Laocon”; “Milon from Croton”; “Seneca or unknown Greek poet”; “The boy who takes out a thorn”, copies of “The gladiator Borghese”, as well as the pyramid with relief drawing on this impressive sculpture by size, presented from four sides. One can also touch the copies of the sculpture “Carlo the Great on a horse”; the relief drawing of the monument of Marco Aurelius; a photography of graphical imprint from the National French Library in Paris; the relief drawing of Corinthian capital, as well as its copy in plaster, as well as the copies of relief in plaster “Scene of sacrifice” and “Scene of sacrifice in antique way”. From Macedonia there are three copies presented, two sculptures from the locality Stobi, “Satyr in play” and “A Head of a Young Woman” and “Votive relief of Thracian Horseman”. The State Rehabilitation School of Children and Youth with impaired vision “Dimitar Vlahov” from Skopje has helped in the organization and staging of the exhibition, due to its specifics, and the Union of Blinds of the Republic of Macedonia and it has been realized by the working team from the Education Department at the Museum of Macedonia. “The cooperation for staging this exhibition started this spring and we had consultations about the standards for staging the platforms and belts on which the blind and people with impaired vision would move around the museum, about the color, the size of the letters while presenting the works etc. We are pleased with the cooperation with the museum, especially with the Education Department. At the opening there were our three students and soon we are planning to organize a visit to the exhibition for all pupils with impaired vision. It is also important that an opportunity was projected after the visit to the exhibition, in one of the museum rooms, the pupils themselves to make sculptures of clay and plasticine and to present what they had seen in this way”. “Now I can imagine how sculptures looked like at that time” – said one of our pupils at the opening of the exhibition, which speaks about achieving the expected objective” – points out the typhologist Renata Risteska from the State Rehabilitation School of Children and Youth with impaired vision “Dimitar Vlahov”. She adds that pupils in the course of their primary and secondary education, except the other subjects, also attend Art and History of Art. “Through the immediate touch of the sculptures and relief in several dimensions, the visitors are enabled to use the primeval human desire to express their deepest and most subtle feelings, to feel the tactile perception of the most beautiful and the most feminine figure of the classical sculptor heritage, perfect performance of the male body, portraits of mythological characters, the capital as one of the architecture elements, scenes from the votive elements. By involving the touch in experiencing classical works we enable the people with special needs to feel and enjoy these works and all other visitors are given a chance to fill up the visual, using one more sense” – says the manager of the Education Department, Simonida Miljovic. “In touch with the classical art” is the first exhibition of such kind to greater extent, organized in the Louvre Museum, aimed at blind people. The tactile gallery in the Louvre Museum was opened in 1995 and there is also a sculpture department in it. In the gallery there are 20 sculptures exhibited and as a permanent one it is opened every day for interested visitors who can touch the sculptures. The tactile gallery is still the first and the unique of such kind in France and, according to the statement by Cyril Gouet, art historian from the Louvre Museum, the media and the visitors are really interested in it. Its activities in the past two years have been realized according to a new educational program, not only formed for the blind and those with impaired vision, but for the other visitors, too. There are programs for children, for schools, for different groups of visitors, and the gallery cooperates with various associations of blind people and it regularly informs them through letters about its activities. “The touch of the sculptures is what attracts all visitors. Our gained experience has been transferred in the architecture staging, when presenting the works, the possibility for access for people in wheelchairs, as well as children. The number of exhibits is not the only thing important to us, but also the right choice of copies that would provoke bigger interest. In future we are planning to exhibit works presenting the power of animals” – said Gouet in Skopje, after the opening of the exhibition in the Museum of Macedonia.