During the last few online meetings, the MSU local expert group of the EU project BEAM UP / PRISTUP started to discuss different possibilities of adaptation of Museum collection artworks in order to make it more accessible to visually impaired persons.

The aim of the European project BEAM UP / PRISTUP BEAM UP is to bring its contribution to the issue of the accessibility of art museums to visually impaired people through forming a local expert group, which includes mixed contribution coming from experts in art and museum exhibitions, visually impaired people and a visually impaired people expert. Three local expert groups (LEG) were formed during the last months - in Croatia, Italy, and Ireland, acting independently but communicating the acquired knowledge and experience.

The MSU local working group consists of Andrej Hatar, Valentina Nemet, Vinko Zrinščak and curators Ana Škegro, Daniela Bilopavlović Bedenik and Renata Filčić. Kristina Krsnik joined the third meeting of the group in April. After the first meeting and presentation of the VIBE and BEAM UP projects in December, the MSU local working group met in February with the aim of improving the accessibility of the plateau and the interior of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb to blind and visually impaired. The third meeting the seven-member team dedicated to EXAT 51 and Gorgona, two art groups that marked the beginning of contemporary art in Croatia in the 1950s. The artworks of the members of these groups stimulated a discussion about the medium of painting and sculpture and the possibilities of their adaptation. The assumption that to blind and visually impaired people, in contrast to figurative art, abstract art is much easier to comprehend and experience due to the simplicity of shapes and lines, some members of the working group confirmed from their own experiences. The thesis has already been tested in the exhibition “Voyage inside a blind experience” of Josef and Anni Albers, organized as part of the VIBE project. At the meeting the tactile experience of certain original artworks, primarily sculptures was also discussed as well as the possibilities to include other senses as an attempt to broaden the experience of a particular artwork. The main conclusion of the meeting is that the dominant aspiration of the working group in adapting the artworks must be to enable blind and visually impaired people to experience the selected artworks not through others' interpretation but on their own, as much as possible.