It is a deep-seated fantasy of any hardcore art lover to be alone in a room with several magnificent works of art and no security guards–to be able to run your fingertips along each curve and into every crevice, to be free to feel the artist’s hand under your own.

Lisa Baker, viewing a Roman sarcophagus in the Chrysler's new Touch Tour.

In fact, anyone in the presence of Michelangelo’s Pietà would understand completely the physical, sensual power of a remarkable work of art. It’s hard to believe that the bones in the Christ’s ankles wouldn’t feel just as such, or that the folds of the Madonna’s robes and the pale skin on her face wouldn’t give way to the touch. Trying to reconcile those expectations with the knowledge that it would be cool, hard marble meeting your hand instead is in itself mesmerizing.

At the Chrysler Museum of Art, this fantasy is made true for an exclusive community of art lovers. The Touch Tour is a program for the blind, who see artwork in only this way. They are paired with knowledgeable docents who guide them by hand all over the museum to see specially-selected works of the collection. And certainly it provides them with a chance to experience it an a way that the sighted community simply cannot.

“There are things you can discover by touching works of art that you can’t just by seeing them,” said Alexandra Hunter, the Chrysler’s Museum Educator and the program’s coordinator. “It is a one-on-one experience that is very special.”

There are 12 objects on the tour, representing a range of different periods, countries of origin, and media. The latter in turn offers a range of temperatures and textures. There are no paintings on the tour, however, “for practical, conservation reasons.” The sculpted works, even, are experienced through nitrile gloves. “But our sculpture collection is so strong,” Hunter added, that tour-goers certainly won’t mind skipping the canvases. And anyway, sculpture is, by its very nature, more visceral than painting; the act of grinding down a block of stone, chipping away all that is not the figure within, or building from various materials a form, a scene, a moment in time. It seems to be meant for this very experience.

Misty Hagan with Hal Wilkinson, viewing A Peasant Woman Leaning on a Pitchfork.

The development of the Touch Tour was spurred by the efforts of a local activist, Shirley Confino-Rehder, who has pushed for programs for the disabled throughout Hampton Roads. She had also helped develop a similar tour at the Muscarelle Museum of Art in Williamsburg.

But for the Chrysler, the program fits into a larger push to attract a mass audience. Earlier this fall, the museum announced its decision to offer free admission to help achieve that goal. (Visitorship is reportedly up by about 150 percent since the change was made.) In raising the level of accessibility, Hunter has been busy with education programs of all sorts, including “Saplings,” which helps students and parents engage art separately and together. On Saturday, when the Blind Lions’ Club (a branch of the international volunteer association, Lions Club) came in for the Chrysler’s second-ever Touch Tour, they found themselves amidst dozens of Saplings, rambunctiously bounding their way through the halls, foyers, and stairways of the museum.

Somehow, though, it seemed perfectly fitting. Because to experience artwork in this way is to see it like a child. In children there is an inherent desire to touch and to understand what something will feel like. They live life with all the senses, with an unabashed curiosity, and with an urge to learn hands-on.

Frances Tester and Rosalind Tester, with Gray Puryear and Lisa Baker behind them.

As the docents gathered in a receiving room while the Blind Lions finished up a meeting, a number of kids rushed past, sometimes flinging themselves onto nearby beanbags and talking eagerly about the artwork they had just seen. “He’s got more energy in him than I do,” said one of the docents, Hal Wilkinson, observing a young boy watching the electric current flicker under his hand as he touched a plasma globe.

Perhaps it was that energy that infused the tour with its excitement. Or maybe it was because most of the docents were leading a blind tour for their very first time. (“I’m a little nervous,” admitted Rosalind Tester, a seasoned Chrysler docent.) But one way or another, the tour was fun and invigorating for both the guides and the participants–and the docents’ detailed training was evident and effective.

Before Saturday, they had been coached in the basics of working with the blind, which, for people who’ve no experience with the blind community, are not basic at all. They were instructed, for instance, to refer to the experience as “seeing” or “looking at” the work. And sure enough, one tour-goer, Frances Durham, told her docent, when they arrived at the figure of Sekhmet in the Egyptian collection, “Oh, I’ve already seen this one.”

Baker and Puryear looking at Sekhmet.

The docents also familiarized themselves with the space. And as a part of their training, they put on blindfolds and took the tour themselves. This armed Ros Tester, for instance, with particular insights like “There are going to be 15 steps down from here” and “To the right, we’re passing some contemporary paintings which I can tell you do not look like anything in particular except for splattered paint.” For Wilkinson, the physical aspect of negotiating the space was not as much of an issue, as his companion, Misty Hagan, walked quickly up the stairs with her cane tapping every step. “Y’all want me to slow down?” she asked and laughed.

Of course, the docents were also trained to deliver whole histories and descriptions of the objects. The tricky part, though–as they well know from guiding sighted tours–is making it all make sense for an average museum visitor who knows nothing of art history. Gray Puryear traced for his companion, Lisa Baker, the hieroglyphics on Sekhmet’s throne and translated each one. Tester led Durham’s fingertips along the neckline of Alfred Boucher’s Peasant Woman Leaning on a Pitchfork, and said, “She’s kind of saucy, this one. I don’t know why she’s wearing such a low-cut bodice while she’s working in the fields, but as you can see, that is what she’s wearing.”

What seemed most important for the docents to know in the end, though, is that it would be they who would likely be taught how to see the artwork. “They have a deeper intuition [for instance] about the physical gestures and what they mean,” said Hunter.

Durham looks at Undine Rising from the Fountain with Ros Tester.

At one point, when Puryear fumbled for what a Roman sarcophagus was carved from, mumbling, “It’s probably not marble,” Baker offered, “No, it’s not marble. It’s rougher–it must be some kind of sandstone.” In fact, it was sandstone’s close kin; limestone. At another point, after Tester talked a while about the mythology portrayed in Chauncey Bradley Ives’ Undine Rising from the Fountain (which involves a soulless sea sprite killing her unfaithful husband to gain immortality), Durham commented, “The expression on her face is sad and pained, but not angry. It’s beautiful.” And later, when viewing Antoine Louis Barge’s Lion Crushing a Serpent, Durham conversely remarked on how angry the lion seemed, judging from the sharpness of its slightly exposed teeth. “As a docent, I didn’t know that,” said Tester, “until I had a chance to feel it.”

Like other group tours at the Chrysler, any interested visitor may call to schedule a touch tour to fit their schedule. To find out more, contact ahunter@chrysler.org.