The Royal Baths Museum has prepared an exhibition with tiffographs. These are specially prepared small objects that can be touched and thus feel what the original artwork looks like. The tiflographs allow you to experience the shape of dishes, paintings or dresses.
Facilities for people with disabilities have been used by the Royal Baths Museum for a long time. For the blind and visually impaired, it installs tactile aids in the form of tiflographs. These are simplified paintings or tiny sculptures or dresses that can be touched, and their shape and textures, combined with listening to an audioguide, allow a better understanding of the artwork in question.
Running until 1 September 2024, the exhibition ‘The Art of Good Thinking. The Legacy of Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski’, a miniature of Lubomirski’s first wife’s dress has been prepared, the original of which stands right next to it in a glass display case. In addition, a tactile version of the Marshal’s portrait was also on display. Their photographs are published below.
Another curiosity is the buffet’s tiffograph; it was prepared in the form of an installation, and the shape and arrangement of the dishes reflect the form of representation of the original works. The former are miniatures, but plaster casts of the vessels, which are the same size as the originals, have also been placed right next to them. The casts can be touched, feeling the spindles or details at the handle. All the tiffographs have been placed at such a height that they can also be used by children and wheelchair users.
Interestingly, the Royal Baths Museum also uses other methods to affect the senses. Examples include scented oils or samples of fabrics and materials. In the case of the sculptures, it is marble samples.
The facilities introduced in the museum are consulted with blind people. The tiffographs are made by: Multisensory, Katarzyna Pietrzykowska and Jan Pfeifer. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people can also count on support. Exhibition descriptions in sign language are prepared for them.
The exhibition “The Art of Good Thinking. The Legacy of Stanisław Herakliusz Lubomirski” is on display until 1 September 2024. The figure of the eminent writer and politician, one of the most colourful representatives of the Polish Baroque, is brought closer by a rich collection of exhibits from domestic and foreign collections, including exquisite paintings, puzzling drawings and old prints, unique vessels, as well as objects pulled straight from the crypt.
The exhibition consists of two parts. In the Palace on the Isle, we learn about the history of the Marshal’s Baroque Bathhouse, traces of which are still visible in the architecture of the residence of the last king of Poland. One of the rooms in the pavilion, decorated with 17th-century stuccowork, is open to the public for the first time in the Museum’s history.
The main part of the exhibition is located in the Podchorążówka. Here we learn about various threads of S.H. Lubomirski’s biography. The exhibition begins with a story about the history of Ujazdów and Zwierzyniec, as well as the Baroque Łaźnia. Further on, we can look into, among other things, the history of the Marshal’s family, his literary works, foundations and patronage, and political activity.
You can read more about the exhibition at www.lazienki-krolewskie.pl
photos: editors of whiteMAD, Royal Łazienki Museum
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