Next year, the Omero Tactile Museum in Ancona will mark thirty years of existence. Three decades marked by change, transformation, evolution. "When we opened in 1993, people called us crazy," says Professor Aldo Grassini, the museum's president. "We were the only place trying to overturn that reflexive rule—'do not touch'—still enforced in art museums across Italy, Europe, and the world. Similar spaces aren't exactly common now, but there's been a shift in sensitivity." The Omero, housed in the Mole Vanvitelliana, has itself undergone a transformation: it's now a state museum, no longer merely municipal. "And it's not a museum for the blind," Grassini emphasizes. "It's a museum for everyone. Whether sighted or not, anyone can experience art through touch—which isn't a substitute for sight, but rather another way to encounter beauty, to know reality and live it, both aesthetically and emotionally."
The collection itself has grown dramatically. "At the start," Grassini continues, "we had only nineteen pieces in three rooms. Today we occupy about 2,700 square meters and house over two hundred works. There are reproductions of classical masterpieces; original contemporary artworks in a dedicated gallery; scale models of famous monuments; and since last December, an Italian design collection of thirty-two pieces—nearly all of them award-winning Compasso d'Oro winners."
When we opened, people called us crazy. We were the only place trying to overturn that reflexive rule—"do not touch"—still enforced in art museums.
When we opened, people called us crazy. We were the only place trying to overturn that reflexive rule—"do not touch"—still enforced in art museums.The first work acquired? Grassini is certain. "A reproduction of the Venus de Milo. The original is at the Louvre in Paris, but we have ours—a one-to-one replica, cast directly from the sculpture itself, like all our works here. I wanted it because I'd spent my life wondering what it felt like. The idea for the museum came from me and my wife. We were frustrated—traveling the world, entering cultural spaces, and being denied access. As blind people, our struggle has always been, and continues to be, to make art accessible to everyone, as constitutions and human rights declarations prescribe it should be." The challenge is complex. "It absolutely is," Grassini insists. "We don't expect every work in a museum to be touched, especially if touch might damage it. But we'd like exemptions for the blind—we'd like 'do not touch' to stop being automatic. Gloves exist. Sanitizing exists. There are many ways to let everyone experience art."
At the Omero, there's no such barrier. You can touch—and in doing so, you see. "Touch is too generic a word," Grassini says. "I prefer 'caress.' And here, everyone—sighted or not—can do it, discovering the pleasure of contact with things. Art becomes an intimate, deep, personal relationship. Seeing a surface is one thing; touching it is another. The sensory nuances are radically different—and multiplied." Accessibility, inclusion, democracy: these are the principles underlying the Omero, which also runs workshops and educational programs. It's named, fittingly, after Homer, history's greatest blind artist. "Not a sculptor, but a poet of universal vision. Thirty years ago, when I had to choose a name for this space, there was no question." A Homeric space, then. A grand museum—rooted in the principles of equality it upholds, waging a battle it continues to fight.