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Jamie Song is the Program Coordinator, Accessibility at The Metropolitan Museum of Art where she works with the disability community. Prior to that she was at The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum and The Rubin Museum of Art. She holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Pratt Institute, and Teachers College, Columbia University, where she is also currently pursuing her doctoral degree in Art & Art Education with a concentration in Museum Education. Her research interests revolve around how school-aged children with disabilities learn in the art museum.
From Curative to Creative
Museum programs for disabled people are commonly viewed through a therapeutic lens, a perspective rooted in the medical model of disability emphasising the curative aspects of skill-building and socialisation. However, The Met’s approach centres on creativity. While developing skills and connecting with others are important programmatic goals, we design experiences to foster individual creative expression, not to “correct” disability. This philosophy subverts the typical expectations that non-disabled people have about how people with disabilities can and want to engage with art in museums, and values the experience of disability as a generative force rather than as a hindrance to creativity.