A close-up of someone with medium brown skin tone holding a large gray rectangular panel covered in raised, irregular geometric lines and angular shapes. The person is wearing a black sleeve, a silver cuff bracelet, and a ring, with their right hand hold thing panel, while their left explores it tactily with their fingertips. In the background, a white wall features part of an abstract painting with blue line segments and blocks matching the same shapes on the tactile object.

PAC worked with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Reimagined The Fisher Collection at 10, creating an integrated access system with tactile wayfinding, descriptions for every artwork, captions and transcripts for all media, and an accessible exhibition microsite.

Media

A stylized, computer-rendered 3D object in bright cyan and dark teal tones on a plain light background of a large sloped rectangular panel extends diagonally upward. The panel is covered with many small raised bars, angled lines and protruding rectangles. Beneath it is a rectangular base frame with thick edges and open cutout areas, supporting the upper surface.
A meeting room table with two gray tactile objects laid out on flat base panels and a laptop behind them. The pieces have curved, abstract shapes with raised edges, cutouts, and smooth sculpted surfaces. An open laptop sits toward the back right, displaying a dark interface with an image of a similar object in full color on the screen. Around the table are loose cables, a small device or adapter, eyeglasses, and a partially visible snack wrapper.
Two geometric tactile objects made of gray rectangular structures. In the foreground, there is a large open frame of a cube. Behind it is a clustered grid of blocks grouped together in a repeating grid of repeated cubes. The scene is photographed from a slightly elevated angle, with a lot of empty white background above the object.
A close-up of a person with light skin tone using both hands to handle touch a tactile model of many cubes stacked in grid like paterns. The object has a repeating square grid pattern on its walls and top edges, resembling a miniature building or construction system. The structure appears hollow in the center, with multiple connected rectangular sections.
A tightly cropped view of a gray, shiny, crumpled-looking tactile object, resembling folded metal or a crushed bag. It has angular folds, hollow openings, and reflective highlights along its smooth surfaces. The object sits on a white tabletop or shelf, with a softly lit beige wall in the background.
Rob Itri Vincent, a Metí man in a light sweater, beige pants, and brown shoes is crouching while holding a tape measure stretched across the light wood floor. A blue tape line runs perpendicular to the measuring tape near a dark wall on the right. Other people's legs and shoes are partially visible around the scene.
A few people stand in a small indoor room watching someone touch a tactile floor strip with their long white cane. On our left, Rob Itri Vincent, a Metí man is wearing all black with his arms crossed, holding a sheet of paper and looking downward. His foot is resting on a strip of black tape on the floor that is being touched with the tip of a long white cane, held by someone on our right, who's blocked by Corey Timpson, a white man wearing all black. Corey is also looking at the floor strip.
An interior museum spacewith a large suspended exhibition banner dominating the scene. The banner is pink on top and red on the bottom with bold black and white text on the banner which reads "Opening April 18" and "Fisher Collection Reimagined." On the right side of the banner is a black silhouette illustration resembling a spider sculpture. Above the banner, wall text identifies the space as the "Doris and Donald Fisher Collection Galleries." A red exit sign is visible in the background near the ceiling.

Project Description

Large-scale exhibition reinstallations are rare opportunities. When a museum takes on a project to reinstall and reinterpret nearly 250 artworks, some on public display for the first time, there is a chance to do more than rehang the work. There is a chance to rethink how people encounter it.

When the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art reimagined its 100-year loan agreement with the Fisher Collection, the reinstallation spanned three full floors and an additional gallery, featuring prominent modern artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder, and Andy Warhol. The exhibition also served as a pilot for interpretive approaches new to SFMOMA, including additional audio-visual content situating works within broader historical and social narratives, family-focused labels, and hands-on learning spaces.

The ambition was not just to create a stronger exhibition. It was to welcome more audiences into the galleries.

SFMOMA engaged Prime Access Consulting (PAC) as part of an ongoing and growing relationship, bringing PAC in to help make that ambition real for disabled visitors. PAC worked across multiple SFMOMA departments, including Interpretive Media, Exhibitions and Design, Web and Digital, Curatorial, Operations and Installation, and Visitor Services, to build a coherent, interconnected system of access and inclusion rather than a set of isolated accommodations.

That system takes shape across four core areas:

  • Tactile wayfinding: a tactile wayfinding system combining tactile maps, floor indicators, tactile QR codes, Braille labels, and touch objects for select artworks to promote independent tactile orientation and navigation throughout the exhibition.
  • Descriptive content: a comprehensive descriptive content program, including gallery overviews, visual descriptions of every artwork and its supporting images, guided tactile descriptions for all tactile maps and touch objects, and sound descriptions of audio-based artworks.
  • Captions and transcripts: captions and transcripts for every piece of interpretive media.
  • Accessible digital access: a fully accessible microsite that brings together all exhibition text, descriptive content, and media assets, so the exhibition can be experienced through a visitor’s personal device.

Tactile Wayfinding

The tactile wayfinding system supports orientation, navigation, and discovery throughout the exhibition. Rather than treating tactile access as a single object or a single station, PAC and SFMOMA develop a connected system that includes tactile maps, floor indicators, tactile QR codes, Braille labels, and touch objects for select artworks. Together, these elements help visitors understand where they are, what is nearby, how the galleries relate to one another, and how to locate additional accessible content.

Descriptive Content

The descriptive content program expands the exhibition beyond what can be communicated through visual display alone. PAC developed gallery overviews, visual descriptions for every artwork and its supporting images, guided tactile descriptions for tactile maps and touch objects, and sound descriptions for audio-based artworks. This makes description a core part of the interpretive experience, not an occasional supplement. It also creates a more consistent standard across the exhibition, allowing visitors to move through the galleries with access to detailed, structured information about the works, spaces, and media around them.

Captions and Transcripts

Every piece of interpretive media is captioned and transcribed so that time-based content can be accessed in multiple ways. This includes audio-visual materials created to place artworks within broader historical and social narratives. Captions and transcripts support visitors who are Deaf or hard of hearing, visitors who prefer to read, visitors using the exhibition in a noisy gallery environment, and anyone who wants to revisit or search the content later. This work also helps ensure that media access is treated as part of the exhibition’s interpretive infrastructure.

Accessible Digital Access

The accessible microsite brings the exhibition’s text, descriptions, transcripts, and media assets into one place. By making the content available through a visitor’s personal device, the microsite connects the physical gallery experience with a flexible digital layer. Visitors can access descriptions, guided tactile content, captions, transcripts, and related interpretive material in a format designed to work with access technology and personal browsing preferences. This makes the exhibition more navigable, more reviewable, and more usable before, during, and after a visit.

Concluding Thoughts

The scope of this work reflects how the partnership between PAC and SFMOMA continues to mature. In a prior exhibition we worked on together, roughly a quarter of the artworks had descriptions. In this one, every artwork is described. PAC’s continued involvement pushes that standard higher and helps SFMOMA build the internal fluency to sustain it. Each project adds to a shared body of knowledge, making the next one more ambitious and more inclusive.

The Fisher Collection reinstallation shows what access looks like when it is planned from the start and built into the exhibition’s architecture. It is also a marker of what becomes possible when a museum and its partners keep raising the bar.