Prado Gallery allows the blind to touch precious art classics

The Prado Museum’s exhibit “Touch The Prado” offers unheard of accessibility to art for the blind and partially-sighted.

Six masterpieces were curated for the exhibit including Goya’s “The Parasol”; a still life by van der Hamen; “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan” by Velázquez; and “Noli Me Tangere,” Correggio’s painting of Christ meeting Mary Magdalene.

Visitors can engage with the works by feeling super high-resolution 3-dimensional replicas of each painting, printed via a state-of-the-art process called Didu.

The exhibit is open to everyone, allowing even the sighted to get up close to the enigmatic Mona Lisa’s smile, by touching a version of the famous artwork, by a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci.

Some have asked what about the colours? The technology for ‘seeing colours’ is not quite there yet, but the infamous ‘what colour is this dress ’ saga recently proved  we all bring our imaginations to ‘see’ colours differently anyway.

Would you like to experience the classics through touch?