Sanné Mestrom, Touch reveals what eyes can’t see – so museums should embrace interactivity, The Conversation, 3 September 2025
Walk into most art galleries with children, and you’ll hear the familiar refrain “look but don’t touch”. This instruction reveals something troubling about how cultural institutions understand learning. Museums have become temples to visual consumption, where knowledge is received through eyes rather than constructed through bodies.
This fundamentally misunderstands how humans learn – and what we deny young people when we privilege looking over all other forms of engagement.