Museum relaxes hands-off policy

“Don’t touch the art” is a standard refrain at most museums, but the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History is taking a different approach to its new exhibition, “A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal.”

Members of the Senegalese Sufi movement called the Mouride Way often touch or lightly caress images of their spiritual leader, Sheikh Amadou Bamba, as a devotional gesture. Likenesses of Bamba, a Muslim mystic, poet and saint who died in 1927, abound in the exhibition, and Mourides are an important part of the audience.

In honor of their practices and beliefs, Fowler guards have been instructed to relax the rules while using discretion to protect the art.

-- S.M.