I want to articulate why accommodation is such an insufficient concept. So much of structural access, be that an elevator, or a ramp, or signage in braille, or affirmative action, or a loan, is a minimal relational proposition: a ramp can get a person in and out of a place, but what about what happens inside? I don’t want to be accommodated, I want to help change the very systems and structures that view my presence as an act of accommodation.
(McArthur and Palmer 2015, para. 22)
In Ramps—McArthur’s earlier 2014 solo exhibition at ESSEX STREET, New York—20 makeshift ramps were displayed that had been acquired between 2010 and 2013 at her request. McArthur, who had recently moved to New York, needed stairs-free access to private residencies, public galleries, municipal sidewalks, and other sites. Many ramps were constructed after she called art organizations to inquire about existing ramp access and found they had none. Building on precedents in feminist art, in Ramps and McArthur’s overall process, life and need comes first, and from there artworks emerge.
Removed from their original contexts of use at ESSEX STREET, which were mostly arts organizations such as galleries, residencies, non-profit exhibition spaces, and studios, the ramps were laid in a careful grid across the gallery’s floor. The checklist detailed each ramp’s year of construction or purchase, material, and the original location’s street address. The artwork’s tiles were either basic identifying information (for those identified only by address) or the name of the “lending” site so that visitors could match the ramp to the corresponding establishment. Made in varying sizes, with different technical specifications and materials, the ramps all bore traces of use, but their conditions varied widely.
In accordance with a 2012 New York City law stipulating that inaccessible building entrances, public toilets, and elevators must provide directions to the nearest available accessible entrance or facility, a sign was distributed at each of the locations where the ramps were removed. The signs invited people to call ESSEX STREET to request the ramp. Present in the gallery were five blank sign variations indicating this network of relation. As a viewer, it was unclear why lenders originally procured the ramps. Was it because McArthur personally held sway, or maybe they feared the ramifications of not being ADA-compliant? The fact that the art organizations were then willing to temporarily remove the provisional architectures for use as material in an artwork, which would slow the process of entrance for others, prompted further thoughts on priorities and motivations.
McArthur’s lending library setup was a proposition to investigate if disabled people felt they could make use of these types of spaces. While the intention was to have the ramps going in and out, this didn’t occur. Instead, the static taxonomical mapping in the gallery set up a calculation where visitors could assess the resources each organization offered in response to McArthur’s request by comparing the conditions of the ramps and making guesses as to how well they might function. The ramps became an illustration of the level of care these organizations afforded McArthur and, by proxy, the attention to accessibility at the organization in general. Material fact became an indirect and gentle shaming mechanism as critics and visitors alike participated publicly in this assessment. For example, critic David Everitt Howe (2014) wrote, “Tattered and DIY, ESSEX STREET’s two ramps make a failing grade, while the Whitney ISP’s, by comparison, makes the case that ‘a Marxist boot camp’ only want(s) the best” (para. 3). It’s worth noting that “the best” might not actually be the shiniest prefabricated ramp; a ramp’s quality does not indicate other factors that determine use such as whether there will be someone present who knows how to assemble it. The ramp pile-up not only illustrated both the slow process of fighting for access for oneself and others, but it also simultaneously affirmed the highly social and creative nature of access by celebrating the work of McArthur and her friends.
Furthermore, all these ramps were notably portable and temporary, ad hoc fixes retrofitted to structures that already existed. While such constructions can make a real difference, they illuminate how access remains provisional and contingent. On the artwork’s gesture of removal and its inevitability, which adeptly illustrates how organizations continually perform the optics of justice while maintaining systems of injustice, McArthur (2014) stated: “‘The ramps’ presence at ESSEX STREET is unavoidable, their absence from their initially intended sites conforms to the general absence of access at every other cultural and physical institution we attend” (para. 3).
The final element in the gallery was a vinyl wall text of a link to a Wikipedia page, created by McArthur, for writer and activist Marta Russell who wrote the 1998 book Beyond Ramps.6 Quoting the show’s press release, McArthur wrote: “Russell … was one of the many disability activists who knew the fetish of structural access can ignore larger questions of social justice. To think access is to think health care and affordability, language and translation, documentation and identity, social convention and code” (para 4).