ABSTRACT
Touch exhibitions were the first full expression of a museum or gallery’s commitment to the provision of services for their visually impaired visitors. As an exhibition form, they developed from handling sessions, in themselves an outgrowth of the long-standing tradition of loan services to schools first developed in the nineteenth century (Hooper-Greenhill 1991) Thus, the groundwork was laid early for the idea that museum artefacts could be safely handled under controlled conditions, even by children; however, the visually impaired public remained invisible to museums at that time.
