Touch me!

Strictly forbidden! Normally, you would not be allowed to touch the sculptures on display, but the Sprengel Museum Hannover encourages it (at least to a certain extent). An exhibition of works by sculptors Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon and Barbara Hepworth running until 4 May 2025 offers a tactile (art) experiences. You can touch the works of art (with a few restrictions).

“Do not touch”, is the motto of many museums. The works are not meant to be touched, and this is how art conservators want it.  Their mission is to protect and preserve the artworks and to safeguard them for future generations.

Visitors, on the other hand, are tempted to approach the sculptures, to touch and feel them, to trace the material with their hands. Each type of material has its own unique surface, texture and exposure that is best felt with bare hands. Sculpture can only be “grasped” by literally touching it, Henry Moore believed. Similarly, his fellow sculptor Barbara Hepworth, a major figure in British post-war sculpture, was a firm believer that sculpture could only be understood through contact and touch: “I think that every sculpture must be touched… You can’t look at a sculpture if you are going to stand stiff as a ramrod and stare at it”, she pointed out.

The exhibition in the Focus Room of the Sprengel Museum allows visitors to touch the surface of three different works of art, to feel their outlines and contours, and to trace their shapes. Not with bare hands, but with gloves, and as part of a guided “sensory tour”. A studded floor system guides the visitors through the exhibition, and an audio description is available to introduce each work of art.

Barbara Hepworth – Epidauros II

A tactile model of Barbara Hepworth’s bronze sculpture Epidauros II is the first stop on the tour and allows visitors to explore the different surfaces of the sculpture through touch.  The original sculpture is displayed next to the model and, as with the other two original works on display, touching it is not permitted.

Richard Deacon – Another Kind of Blue

The second work is Richard Deacon’s Another Kind of Blue, a large glazed ceramic that seems to have been placed in the room at random, closed in itself and yet distant. The surface seems to capture a fine interplay of reflections, and the few small imperfections evoke a sense of irritation. 

Tony Cragg – The Box

Tony Cragg’s bronze The Box concludes the tour and invites the visitors to change perspective and angle. Cragg is interested in industrially produced, man-made materials whose surfaces allow him to work with great precision.

Understanding sculptures literally touch by touch

The works of Barbara Hepworth, Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg explore forms, surfaces, structures, layers and interspaces and reveal the artists’ intense preoccupation with the material, its shape, form, malleability, the interplay between material and colour, and between object and space, all of which are part of the creative process.

Sculpture is not about reproducing reality but about exploring the possibilities of a material. Sculptures in wood, stone, bronze, glass and steel can be touched and felt, and their thermal parameters, shape, contours and texture can be traced allowing the works to be explored beyond the visual. The physical encounter is central to sculpture. Touching and feeling the works determines their shape and form and allows for an intense physical experience.

In practice, however, exhibitions have tended to focus on the visual perception of works of art. With this exhibition, the Sprengel Museum Hannover is introducing an “experience-oriented way of visiting and encountering a museum”. This change of perspective and its haptic approach to feeling and understanding the works on display can only be welcomed. The tactile experience of art is particularly relevant given the predominantly digital lives of so many people. This is not a new insight, and the Hannover museum exhibition is an attempt to reconnect with this development, once again.

Written by Willy Hafner in German

The exhibition Skulpturen Erfassen runs until 4 May 2025.  More information can be found here.

Looking for more tactile art? Last year, our author Sophie Fendel explored the fascination of touching bronze sculptures exhibited in public space in this article.