Providing Access to Public Art in Natural Locations

March 2020, I traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah to research two extremely unique demonstrations of what is considered a public art destination in a natural setting. The first was Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, located in the remote Rozel Point of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The second was the Petroglyphs of Utah located in Nine Mile Canyon. This research and engagement experience culminated in a 360˚ Virtual Tour developed with Google Tour Creator. The tour outlines the accessibility challenges of both locations as well as recommendations for adaptations in each location. This tour also serves as an introductory model to analyze the accessibility of arts and cultural destinations as well as natural locations and provide a resource to people with disabilities to view the access features of a destination before traveling there. This experience was based around a research idea regarding access to public artworks in natural locations for people with disabilities. 

Obviously, a strong class-based knowledge of art and art history was a big compliment to this experience. Additionally, in summer of 2019 I worked on campus as a TA for a GenEd art class that explored spatial reasoning and virtual education. It was because of this that I learned about virtual tours in the first place.

In January, before my experience took place, I did a free-lance job at a museum in Virginia where I hosted a workshop and created a virtual tour for one of their exhibits. I am an Arts Administration major and that major can take you in a lot of different directions. I never thought I would be the type of person to be starting my own business, but this experience with traveling and creating virtual tours has opened a lot of doors for me in the arts community. It’s definitely something on my mind at the moment and something I plan on working towards.