Helping all visitors see as O'Keeffe saw
Sep. 22—Color was a form of language for famed painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
"The meaning of a word — to me — is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words," O'Keeffe said in 1976, according to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.
In recognition of September as International Color Blindness Awareness Month and to build on the museum's pioneering efforts to become color accessible, the museum will offer free guided tours for people with color vision deficiency (or colorblindness) at 1 p.m. Saturday and again Sept. 30. The museum also has handouts for self-guided versions of the tours, which will describe O'Keeffe's color choices in six of her paintings.
The museum has offered visitors free use of glasses to improve color vision since 2019, when it first partnered with EnChroma Inc., a Berkeley, Calif.-based company that developed the glasses in 2010.
The glasses filter the wavelengths of light that people with red-green colorblindness have the most difficulty interpreting, thus expanding the range of colors wearers can see, and making colors clearer and more distinct, said Kent Streeb, EnChroma's vice president for communication and partnerships.
The importance of color to O'Keeffe, who said color made her life "worth living," spurred the museum's partnership with EnChroma — made even more meaningful, Streeb said, because O'Keeffe suffered from macular degeneration later in life that limited her ability to see color.
"I think O'Keeffe would be pretty honored and pleased to know that other people who are unable to perceive as much color are being enabled to at this museum," he said.
The Santa Fe museum was ahead of the curve in serving colorblind patrons.
In 2019, EnChroma supplied glasses to only a few museums, including the O'Keeffe Museum, but now has glasses in over 100 museums in the U.S. and Europe, Streeb said.
"A lot of this attention to the issue of colorblindness and how it impacts the arts, I think, is testament to what the O'Keeffe Museum has done to champion this condition that's a little bit under the radar," Streeb said. "The rest of the arts world really paid attention."
Colorblindness is far more common than most people realize, he added.
Colorblindness affects 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women, meaning they see only about 10% of the million-plus hues and shades that other people see.
In the months following the O'Keeffe Museum's partnership with Enchroma, the museum averaged 15 to 20 people per week borrowing the Enchroma glasses, numbers typical for other museums partnered with Enchroma, Streeb said.
"It's a testament that this work is important, and I know it's all important to all of us here at the museum," said Renee Lucero, a spokeswoman for the museum. "This initiative speaks to the museum's goal of becoming accessible to all abilities ... something that we're definitely focusing on now and into the future."
