Has anyone ever been to one of these? I always want to go, but I haven’t been able to schedule it in yet.  Here is information on the next one. If you go or have been to one, let us know how you liked it.

Don’t miss the Portland Art Museum’s September 18 tour for the visually impaired. We’ll explore the sculptures outside the members’ entrance.

You’ll enjoy running your hands along Gwynn Murrill’s sleek Coyote VI (the sculpture all the children gravitate to), and, next to it, the bronze graceful Native American woman lifting her thanks offering in Allen Houser’s, Desert Harvest.

Then experience the contrast between Houser’s bronze and Manuel Neri’s Piedra Negra, a massive , semi-abstract study in black marble of a reclining female figure. (If time permits, you can compare those to Seated Figure, the modernist study of a woman carved out of limestone by Portland artist Don Wilson.)

Sighted and non-sighted, every visitor wants to touch Deborah Butterfield’s larger than life Dance Horse. It seems to be made of dozens of pieces of driftwood fitted into a kind of lattice, but it’s actually made of bronze. Butterfield made casts of each piece of driftwood (numbered so she’d know where they fit in the completed horse), then reassembled the bronze replicas.

The tour begins at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, September 18. Participants assemble at the museum’s main entrance, 1219 SW Park Avenue, Portland. (Those requiring a ramp should come in at the Members Entrance on the north side of the building.)

The tour is free with museum membership. Non-museum members who are visually impaired pay $3 for museum admission and may bring in one helper at no charge. Children 17 and under are free. Seating is provided, and guide dogs are welcome.

Please let us know if you will attend the tour by calling and leaving a message at 503-276-4290.