Exhibition and Event Accessibility
Towards a Warm Embrace and all related events are free to attend and open to all. No booking is required.
The exhibition includes abundant cushioned seating and places to lay down. Many of the artworks invite touch. Wall labels are in large print, 18-point font.
All museum lighting is LED. The Kaemmer Family Gallery has immersive colored light and one artwork with audio which is captioned. Volume and light levels can be adjusted with 48 hours advance notice. Please contact Farrah Pribyl at fpribyl@carleton.edu or (507) 222-5567.
Masking is encouraged, and free surgical masks are available at the museum front desk. Students, faculty and staff can obtain KN95 masks from the Dean of Students Office, Student Health and Counseling, and Human Resources. For this exhibition, the museum has instituted ‘Masked Mondays’ requiring masks each Monday during open hours 11am–6pm.
ASL interpretation for museum events is available with advance request. We appreciate two weeks notice, but will do our best to meet requests that come after this timeframe.
Service animals are welcome.
Carleton Students are currently developing an audio tour of the exhibition. Please check back for further details.
If you or a friend require a particular form of support not listed here, we would love to connect. Please contact Farrah Pribyl at fpribyl@carleton.edu or (507) 222-5567.
Venue and Parking
The Perlman Teaching Museum is located inside the Weitz Center for Creativity at 320 Third Street East, Northfield, MN 55057. The Teaching Museum is on your left as you enter the atrium.
An ADA all-gender single-occupancy bathroom is located inside the Weitz on floor -1. To locate this bathroom, turn to the right upon entering the Weitz Center from the 3rd Street entrance. You will reach a flight of 7 stairs, which are each 7 inches high. There is an elevator to the left of the stairs. The bathroom is located to the right of the seating area in the center.
Accessible parking spaces are available on the Union Street side of the building, and a wheelchair ramp is available at the main entrance at Third Street and College Street.
Touch Tours
- Wednesday, January 24th 4:30 -5:30pm
- Thursday, February 15th, 5-6pm
Many of the artworks included in the Perlman Teaching Museum’s current exhibition invite touch and sensory engagement. Join our student workers on the dates and times listed above for a guided touch tour of Towards a Warm Embrace.
Within art museums, touch tours have traditionally been offered for blind or low vision visitors, however these tours can foster a sense of collaboration which extends to sighted people as well. Touch is a significant way we encounter the world and an important element of artists creating their artwork. Those who work in museums have long observed that the average visitor spends mere seconds in front of an artwork and much of this time is spent reading wall texts and labels.
Touch encourages us to spend more time with individual artworks. This form of engagement offers visitors the chance to slow down, get close to artworks, and consider what tactile and textural associations they receive through gliding fingertips, grasping, tapping, and pressing to reveal new aspects of the object’s materiality.