Making art accessible to all

A. I grew up in Hollywood, California, and my parents were very strong supporters of the Hollywood Ten who were being persecuted during the [Joseph] McCarthy era and were accused unjustly of being anti-American. My father was very involved in music, and my mother was a child psychoanalyst. We were three sisters, and each of us in our own way has benefited from being encouraged to understand and contribute to the arts.

Q. Explain the work you did at the MFA.

A. I applied for a job to help the museum’s education department do outreach to the Boston community, to audiences who weren’t yet a central part of the museum’s activities, including older adults and people with disabilities. I’d grown up with a very able uncle who was blind; he was a wonderful pianist. He was very key to my sense that people with disabilities could be part of an artistic life, and my own realm happened to be visual arts. I created an advisory board of people who were mostly advocates for people with disabilities or were themselves living with blindness or hearing loss or physical or mental health disabilities.

Q. What impact did you have?

A. We impacted how things were installed, how security guards greeted people entering the museum who might need assistance. We worked with designers on how they designed the brochures and literature. All the improvements helped a broader audience as well. Making things more accessible for someone in a wheelchair helps the person bringing a young child in with a stroller. Making text and labels larger also helps a lot of people who don’t think of themselves as disabled.

Q. Can you explain the intersection of your work with the world of medicine?

A. I’ve found that some scientists who think of their own research in metaphorical terms have been really drawn to my work. One is a research scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel who published a book that included 19 of my woodcuts and watercolors. I can’t really explain it, and I can’t say I understand all his ideas. But I am really thrilled that there is this attraction and association [to my work] at the edges of what I can understand myself. My work was also used in an article about preventing genocide in the Journal of Public Health Policy. It’s the most circulated of all my images, a poster that arose out of the phrase “Sticks and Stones,’’ that really speaks to encouraging tolerance of differences.

Q. Has there been a common thread in your own work over the years?

A. A common thread is that I often don’t know where I am going with an image until I am really engaged with it. My strength is being able to follow the lead I discover in the process of working, rather than trying to know ahead of time exactly where I am going. I stay open to possibilities, and that was also the strength of my work at the museum. I think of it as a state of mind that’s been a constant. It’s all in the service of creating something that was very accessible to other people. I have some work in hospital settings, some in bookstores, some in music settings. I think it has an open quality; people can approach it without being intimidated. I’m very pleased when I discover that children like my artwork.

Interview has been edited and condensed. Linda Matchan can be reached at l_matchan@globe.com.