Color blindness is a fairly common form of visual impairment. It causes difficulties in people’s everyday lives. When it comes to art patrons with color blindness, the disability makes it difficult for them to fully experience art. It generally makes it harder to perceive certain colors. To improve access to art, the Portland Art Museum has introduced color vision glasses for its visitors with red-green colorblindness, according to Here is Oregon.
Visitors to the museum can borrow these glasses if they wish to enhance their color experience. The color-correcting glasses are known as EnChroma, and the museum is the first in Oregon to offer such a service. However, there are already certain places in the state that offer glasses or other aids to help people with color blindness experience colors more vividly. According to the source, the City of Sandy was the first to install colorblind adapted outdoor panoramic glasses for viewing Mount Hood in 2020. The City of Lincoln has also purchased nine pairs of glasses that are available to visitors to the Lincoln City Community Center.
The glasses work thanks to a very special feature. The lenses have a light filter that increases the contrast between red and green, allowing people to perceive the two colors and their different tones more accurately. They cannot cure color blindness, but they do allow people to see more shades of red and green with greater accuracy. They cost between $200 and $400 per pair. In a video, Jason Le, a Kress Interpretive Fellow at the Portland Art Museum, said: “A lot of my work is curating and art analysis and constantly looking at art, every day. I think a lot of people experience art in completely different ways, and that’s one of the beautiful and powerful things about it.” Le revealed that he became aware of his color blindness at a young age.
“I remember my teacher coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, the grass you painted is brown,'” Le said. “And I was like, what do you mean?” He added, “I’m nervous because I can’t imagine that many color shifts will be noticeable to my personal vision.” He also pointed out how exciting it is because he gets to revisit many of his favorite works. The man looked at “Portrait of Infanta Maria Ana de Austria,” one of his favorite works, which shows a princess in a bright red dress. “I didn’t think I could see such bright reds. It highlights the opulence of her dress. I can see many more color shifts that I didn’t notice before.”
“I want to look at it again and again,” Le continued. Daniel Laus, a 13-year-old student from Portland, commented, “At first, everything looked very red, like everything was red. Now that my eyes are adjusting, the reds are still very vibrant, but everything else seems to be its normal color.” Russell Read, a museum visitor with colorblindness, noted, “Part of it literally looks gray, now here in red, wow,” Read said as he tried on the glasses. “It just stands out.” Stephanie Parrish, the museum’s director of learning and community partnerships, explained, “If these glasses help remove a barrier, then that’s what we’re trying to do.”
