Blog / 2021 / Making Art More Accessible with a Simple Adjustment

At first glance, my exhibit in the Princeton Public Library’s reading room looks a little off. All the paintings and prints seem to have drifted a few inches down the wall when no one was looking. But the placement is intentional.

I hung my animal alphabet book images so kids might more easily enjoy the art. But what I didn’t realize when I installed the show this way is that there’s something even more important in hanging paintings below the industry default of placing the center of the artwork at a height of 57 inches.

The art’s lower placement makes the images more available to art lovers who get around in wheelchairs.

Joy Murray pointed this out to me. She’s a friend, an artist, and someone who’s forever making clear all the ways I leave disability out of my thinking. (When I deleted Facebook and Instagram, I needed Joy to explain to me that social media makes a social life more accessible for those who cannot navigate the world outside their homes because ableist thinking makes that world hostile and dangerous.)

For the most part, when I exhibit my work, I have at least a bit of control in how my art is displayed. Going forward that means that whenever I can I’m showing my work closer to the height of someone in a wheelchair.

It’s a small adjustment as well as a deeply significant one, especially in its ripple effect. It will do for viewers of my work what Joy has always done for me: it will make an inclusive world harder to ignore and easier to imagine.

Letter Love
Princeton Public Library
65 Witherspoon
Princeton, NJ 08542

Open: through August 31^st
Hours: 10a to at least 5p every day except Sunday, when it’s 1p to 5p