Projects: Boise Art Museum

Many Wests

A gallery scene shows two masked adults with light skin tone standing beside a large pale carved wooden form while one holds a smaller matching carved block, with a black guide dog in a harness on our right. On our left, the tall wood sculpture of stacked blankets rises out of the frame and has stacked, wavy, horizontal ridges, visible cracks, knots, and protruding pegs or rods; its warm blond surface catches bright light. Near the center, Melanie Fales, a white woman with shoulder-length dark hair gestures with both hands toward the smaller block as if she's about to grab it. On our right, another woman with straight shoulder-length brown hair holds the small carved block at waist height while a black crossbody bag hangs at her side. The black dog stands in the lower right facing right, wearing a brown and white guide harness; the visible blue text on the harness reads, "Guide Dogs." The setting has a reddish polished floor, pale stone architectural walls, a dark wooden door, a blue metal gate, and an open doorway into a darker gallery where a framed picture hangs on the wall.

Boise Art Museum

PAC and Boise Art Museum used an IMLS Museums Empowered grant to embed inclusive design into Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea—spanning galleries, graphics, and media—with visual descriptions, tactile access, ASL/captions, mobile interpretation, staff training, and an Inclusive Design Advisory Group, producing an accessible exhibition and institutional capacity.

Art In the Park

A sunny outdoor art market set up in a park. On our left, a white tent displays colorful paintings, including a large bear portrait and landscape-style artwork. Several people with light skin tone are walking on the grass in front of the booth. An additional cluster of people look at the art in the booth next to a parked wheelchair. In the background, there are more visitors, parked cars, a closed patio umbrella, and large leafy trees providing shade.

Boise Art Museum

For Boise Art Museum’s Art in the Park, PAC embedded inclusive design across the festival ecosystem—auditing wayfinding, creating an accessible map with a long description, refining parking/drop-off and wheelchair lending, training sighted guides, and onboarding vendors with accessibility guidance—so access became core to planning rather than an add-on.

Sign Language Labels

Photograph of a museum lobby during an event. In the foreground, a large flat-screen monitor sits on a black-covered table displaying a white woman signing in ASL against a dark background. Beyond the monitor, several visitors stand in front of a gallery entrance labeled “Myths, Fables, and Fortunes: Our Place within the Landscape,” while a woman in black signs to a small group gathered near the doorway. The space has tall pale stone walls, white gallery surfaces, and reddish polished concrete floors.

Boise Art Museum

PAC worked with Boise Art Museum to develop Deaf-centered ASL label videos, welcome materials, staff training, and sustainable production workflows shaped by a Deaf Access Working Group, establishing ASL as an integrated part of the museum’s exhibition interpretation.