Glasses allow colour blind to experience vibrant Van Gogh

Colour blind visitors to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam will be able to enjoy the works of Vincent van Gogh in fuller colour thanks to a new partnership.

EnChroma glasses for red-green colour blindness will be available for guests who suffer from Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD) to borrow while touring the museum.

The new glasses support the Van Gogh Museum’s drive to promote accessibility.

Mirjam Eikelenboom, Program Manager for Accessibility for the Van Gogh Museum, said:

“As Vincent wrote in 1885, ‘Colour expresses something in itself. One can’t do without it; one must make use of it.’

“We are very pleased that more visitors are able to experience the vibrant colours of the art of Van Gogh with the help of these glasses.”

The Van Gogh welcomes an average of over two million visitors each year, including 85,000 who are colour blind.

An further 250 million people visit the museum’s collections online. Roughly 10.5 million of these cannot experience all of the colours in Van Gogh’s work.

The Van Gogh Museum is the first museum in Amsterdam and second in The Netherlands to support colour blind guests via the EnChroma Colour Accessibility Program.

Over 80 museums participate in the programme including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Centraal Museum Utrecht in The Netherlands, Chau Chak Wing Museum in Australia and Museums of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Denver in the US.

Erik Ritchie, CEO of EnChroma, said:

“I’m confident that Van Gogh would be pleased that the colours he so meticulously crafted are now more visible to millions of people previously unable to perceive them.

“We commend the Van Gogh Museum for working with us on an initiative that will inspire thousands of people with colour blindness to experience Van Gogh’s masterpieces in a new, more colourful way.”