Exceptions is a multi-platform creative journal that publishes work by visually impaired and blind individuals. Available as a print journal, audiobook, and on a fully accessible website, and run by students at Michigan State University, Exceptions showcases the experiences, worldviews, and artistic ideas of people with sight loss. Alongside submissions of memoir, fiction, poetry, music, and multimedia art, the journal also includes interviews with blind professionals who have achieved success in a variety of disciplines.
In 2015, Exceptions partnered with the renowned Eli and Edythe Broad Museum to debut an exclusive exhibit of "Accessible Art," a series of works that combine poetry and tactile paintings to produce a dynamic, interactive experience for guests across the visual ability spectrum. The event was featured on MSUToday and The State News.
In 2017, the Broad Museum exhibited “Sense of Self.” Focusing on art accessibility across the visual disability spectrum, this day-long exhibition incorporated both academic theory in the form of a multidisciplinary symposium, and hands-on, creative engagement through an exhibition of accessible artwork created by MSU students. The event was funded by an engaged pedagogy grant from the Michigan State University College of Arts and Letters, with additional support from the Broad Museum. The symposium brought together two national leaders in accessible art, museum outreach, and disability studies, Dr. Georgina Kleege (UC Berkeley) and Lucas Livingston (Art Institute of Chicago), to share critical insights and expertise with an audience of faculty and students representing several departments and a range of multidisciplinary interests.
In 2019, the Broad Art Lab exhibited “Everyday.” The exhibition’s theme highlighted how what is ordinary to some is profoundly alienating to others. How can one describe the everyday as an all-inclusive term when every person is different? In order to achieve inclusion and maximum accessibility in all places, spaces, and things, the featured art sought to render the familiar strange and reimagine what “everyday” means, and how this concept can be communicated within artistic spaces, museums, and cultural institutions.