A New Way of Exploring: A Q&A with JiaJia Fei and Nora Rodriguez of the Jewish Museum

In 2019, the Jewish Museum in New York, New York launched new audio tours intended to illuminate the Museum’s collection. Funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the tours bring new perspective to a museum visit through artists’ voices, a variety of lenses grounded in Jewish traditions and rituals, lively conversations with grade-schoolers, and more. The tours are available via the web at Tours.TheJewishMuseum.org and are easily accessible for both on-site and off-site use.

 This month we speak to JiaJia Fei, Director of Digital, and Nora Rodriguez, Interpretive Media Producer, at the Jewish Museum about conception and creation of the tours. 

 

VSA & Accessibility: Can you briefly explain how the audio tours were developed from concept to production?

Fei and Rodriguez: The Jewish Museum’s new Mobile Tours were inspired by the reinstallation of the Museum’s collection exhibition Scenes from the Collection in 2018. Designed with a thematic (rather than linear) approach to presenting art and Jewish culture, the exhibition is conceived as a series of “scenes” that would rotate over time. Our new audio tour platform was concepted to accommodate this flexible display, illuminate the connections between objects across time and place, and to reflect the polyphonic experience of art in a variety of voices. We engaged the digital agency Code and Theory to design and develop a user-friendly, web-based app that could be used across all devices to lower the barrier for entry. Our audio tours are designed to complement the new collection installation by offering visitors a range of pathways or voices through which to experience the exhibition. For example, they might explore objects through the lens of Jewish ritual, listen in on a conversation with middle school students, or learn about Isaac Mizrahi’s “favorite things” on view.

VSA & Accessibility: How did you choose and develop the content pieces for the audio tours?

Fei and Rodriguez: The first series of audio tours for this project highlighted the voices of living artists in the collection with works on view, including Kehinde Wiley, Maria Kalman, Isaac Mizrahi, Arlene Shechet. Artists invited to participate in our “Artists’ Voices” series were asked to speak about their own work, but then also select and discuss other works on view from our collection that inspired them. Artists took various approaches to this prompt: Kehinde Wiley sought out portable objects, drawing connections between the migratory experiences of Jewish people and people of the African diaspora; Alex and Maria Kalman spoke about how they celebrate and observe holidays in their own home; Arlene Shechet was interested in the theme of light and vision in her object selection. For tours that are not led by artists, we assemble a small committee of “content leads” to determine tour direction, tone, list of objects, etc. The content leads include representatives from Education and Curatorial, however, members of the Visitor Experience, Communications, and Digital Teams often weigh in on content as well.

The longer-form conversation between Ross Bleckner and Deborah Kass was adapted from an on-site public program held at the Jewish Museum in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. As the project launched in conjunction with this anniversary, this audio was especially timely in serving a wider audience beyond the audience of visitors who attended the talk at the Jewish Museum.

VSA & Accessibility: The tours are available on a new web app accessible on any device with internet access, do you provide devices in-house for patrons who don’t have a personal device?

Fei and Rodriguez: Although we encourage visitors to explore our tours on their own devices (or from home), we also offer free devices on loan at the admissions desk, as well as free headphones.

VSA & Accessibility: What type of feedback have you received from the tours since their launch earlier this year?

Fei and Rodriguez: Visitors have responded favorably to a breadth and depth of new content available, as well as the ability to listen to audio off-site. They have also been excited by the variety of voices as well as not being forced to download an app to access content when they visit. In addition to the voices of artists, we also developed new tours designed for kids when visiting the museum as a family, as well as visitors with disabilities (verbal descriptions and ASL videos).

VSA & Accessibility: What is the process for creating new content for the tours?

Fei and Rodriguez: Though each tour is a little different, the process begins with a monthly working group, comprised of representatives from departments across the Jewish Museum. At these meetings, we discuss the broad vision for our audio tours, including goals, tone, and which tours will best serve visitors in their experience of the Museum. As previously mentioned, once we have selected which tours we will create, a smaller group of content leads meets to discuss production (who will voice the tour, which objects will be selected, etc). When we create content for a specific audience (for example, Verbal Descriptions for visitors who are blind or have low vision), it’s important to us that a member of that community contribute input and feedback on the tour from the outset. We work with an outside partner, Acoustiguide, to help record and edit interview material into the final tour. 

In addition to audio tours for our collection, we are also producing new audio tours for our special exhibitions. The process begins with internal discussions with curators about concept and creative direction, including core stops on the tour based on objects on view in the exhibition. Then an interview with participating voices on the tour takes place with our audio production partner Acoustiguide. After a collaborative editing process, the final audio files and images are made available on Tours.TheJewishMuseum.org, our website TheJewishMuseum.org, and on SoundCloud.

VSA & Accessibility: In your post “Disability Inclusion in the Digital Age,” Meredith Nicholson writes, “As we continuously expand our services and programs for visitors with disabilities, technology offers a new opportunity to consider yet a new public space that should be made accessible to all: the online space.” How do Mobile Tours play a role in your overall digital strategy and what other efforts do you plan to implement?

Fei and Rodriguez: This Mobile Tour project was an opportunity to deeply embed accessibility concerns to the inception of a project. These learnings have also informed and have been extended into other digital aspects of how we reach our audiences, including the integration of alt-text on images online for visitors who use voiceover controls on their devices, as well as inclusion of transcripts for every audio (and video) content piece distributed by the Jewish Museum. The process of creating content is always an opportunity for us to both build relationships with, and learn from, many of our visitors with disabilities. We’re hopeful that as we continue building these relationships, we can expand and deepen our content to continue creating a more welcoming and accessible Museum experience for all visitors.

 VSA & Accessibility: In that same post, Nicholson writes that “All too often, there is a myth that accessibility is too difficult, too expensive, or too inconvenient to achieve. Accessibility is also an ongoing, iterative process, especially as museums constantly rotate exhibitions and other materials on display. The reality is that the benefits outweigh the costs, and making a platform like the Museum’s Mobile Tours more accessible for some makes it more accessible to everyone.” What do you see as key first steps would you recommend to organizations that have the “too difficult, too expensive, or too inconvenient” mindset?

Fei and Rodriguez: Accessibility and inclusion first begin with the audience—working directly with visitors with disabilities to understand their needs and perspectives. The other myth is that all too often, design decisions are made through assumptions rather than usability research and testing with the intended audience. For all of our content and platforms created for visitors with low vision or blindness or visitors who are deaf, we invite these visitors to test and provide feedback, which is later incorporated into our process and considered from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.

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