The role of audiovisual congruence in aesthetic appreciation of contemporary music and visual art.

Does congruence between auditory and visual modalities affect aesthetic experience? While cross-modal correspondences between vision and hearing are well-documented, previous studies show conflicting results regarding whether audiovisual correspondence affects subjective aesthetic experience. Here, in collaboration with the Kentler International Drawing Space (NYC, USA), we depart from previous research by using music specifically composed to pair with visual art in the professionally-curated Music as Image and Metaphor exhibition. Our pre-registered online experiment consisted of 4 conditions: Audio, Visual, Audio-Visual-Intended (artist-intended pairing of art/music), and Audio-Visual-Random (random shuffling). Participants (N = 201) were presented with 16 pieces and could click to proceed to the next piece whenever they liked. We used time spent as an implicit index of aesthetic interest. Additionally, after each piece, participants were asked about their subjective experience (e.g., feeling moved). We found that participants spent significantly more time with Audio, followed by Audiovisual, followed by Visual pieces; however, they felt most moved in the Audiovisual (bi-modal) conditions. Ratings of audiovisual correspondence were significantly higher for the Audiovisual-Intended compared to Audiovisual-Random condition; interestingly, though, there were no significant differences between intended and random conditions on any other subjective rating scale, or for time spent. Collectively, these results call into question the relationship between cross-modal correspondence and aesthetic appreciation. Additionally, the results complicate the use of time spent as an implicit measure of aesthetic experience.

Towards transparent decision-making processes within museums: Case study of Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC).

Understanding that good decision-making is paramount for the success of an organization and recognizing that strategic decision-making inside museums is a topic that has been over-passed by researchers, this paper intends to contribute to the relevance of the subject through the implementation of an innovative tool. Decision-making in museums is normally focused on the intuition, subjectivity, and experience of the curator, who brings all his knowledge to the exhibition programming. However, museums' management and environment are constantly changing, thus the application of this tool would aim to make decisions in a more democratic, transparent, inclusive, and accurate manner. Besides, it will be easier to understand how distinct subjects can work together, demonstrating successful results to improve the decision-making process when programming and measuring temporary exhibition seasons in museums. This paper describes the design and implementation of the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) for the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC). It also analyzes and evaluates the decision-making process when scheduling exhibitions for a season.

A Pilot Study of Art Museum-Based Small Group Learning for Pre-Health Students.

Introduction: Health professions educators are increasingly recognizing the fundamental role the arts and humanities play in professional identity formation; however, few reports exist of programs designed specifically for pre-health professional students. Methods: We designed and delivered four, 2.5-h sessions for pre-health professions students at a local museum in partnership with museum educators. Participants were invited to respond to a follow-up survey asking about their perceived insights from and importance of the session. We used descriptive statistics and thematic content analysis for quantitative and qualitative data, respectively. Results: Ten of the participants responded to the survey (n=10/23, response rate=43%) and all supported the integration of such an experience in their pre-health curriculum. The qualitative analysis of responses to the open-ended item about any insights gained from participation in the program revealed three themes: cultivation of the health professional, personal growth, and awareness and appreciation of multiple perspectives. Discussion: Participants who responded to our survey drew meaningful connections to the relevance of these sessions to their development as future professionals.

Art is Patient: A Museum-Based Experience to Teach Trauma-Sensitive Engagement in Health Care.

Psychological trauma is ubiquitous, an often hidden yet influential factor in care across clinical specialties. Interdisciplinary health professions education is mobilizing to address the importance of trauma-sensitive care. Given their attention to complex human realities, the health humanities are well-poised to shape healthcare learners' responses to trauma. Indeed, many such arts and humanities curricula propose narrative exercises to strengthen empathy, self-reflection, and sensitive communication. Trauma, however, is often unwordable, fragmentary, and physically encoded, incompatible with storying methods. This article presents a recent innovation, the Art is Patient seminar series, which focuses on aesthetic exercises to help learners access and share non-verbal, embodied, and relational responses to art. Based in an art museum context, it provides successive experiences of approaching, witnessing, and engaging with visual art as an analogue to developing trauma-sensitive relationships. Reflections on the process locate the seminar vis-à-vis health humanities practices, aesthetics, and trauma-informed approaches.

Productive arts engagement at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum and its health effects on the older Japanese population: results of a randomized controlled trial.

Background: This randomized controlled trial aims to compare changes in mental and physical health in older Japanese community-dwellers who participated in a productive art-based activity at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum (intervention group) and in their counterparts, who did not participate in the intervention (control group). Methods: A total of 73 older community-dwellers living in Tokyo participated in a single-blind RCT in two parallel groups (intervention group versus control group). The intervention was 2 h of productive art-based activities per week. The weekly sessions were carried out at the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum over a 12-week period. The control group did not participate in any productive art-based activity over the study period. Well-being, quality of life and frailty were assessed before the first, and after the last, art-based activity. These outcomes were assessed with the same schedule in both groups. Results: The intervention group saw a significant improvement in their quality of life (p < 0.044) and mixed results on their physical health (i.e., decreased frailty status) when compared to the control group. The comparison of changes in frailty scores between M0 and M3 showed improvement in the intervention group (p = 0.014), but when adjusted for baseline characteristics by linear regressions, revealed only a trend (p = 0.070). No conclusive effect was shown with well-being. Interpretation: This RCT showed mixed health effects of productive art engagement in older Japanese community-dwellers in Tokyo. Benefits were reported for quality of life and mixed effects were observed for frailty, while no significant effect was found for well-being.Clinical Trial Registration: Ethic committee of Shobi University, Tokyo (Japan), ref. A-2021-1; Clinical Trial Number NCT03679715.

Art in medicine: in the classroom, exam room, and Reading room.

In this article, the authors discuss the development and current curriculum of the Art in Medicine course at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (CUSOM), developed in collaboration with the Centre for Bioethics and Humanities, and the Denver Art Museum. Examples of art museum-based techniques implemented with medical students are discussed with objectives, methods, and pedagogy highlighted. Translational skillsets for medical professionals, including empathy, tolerance of ambiguity, perspective taking, bias, and communication are emphasised through practice in engagement in visual arts with facilitation by medical faculty and art museum educators. Following the discussion of classroom based activities, two of the co-authors, physician-educators from the CUSOM Departments of Medicine and Radiology, discuss the direct applications and importance of these skillsets in the context of the exam room and the reading room respectively.

A decision-making method for planning exhibitions in arts organizations: A case study of CaixaForum Barcelona.

Museum directors play a fundamental role in the management of arts institutions, and they need to constantly adapt to the changes and requirements of the society. Questions have been raised about how decisions are made in museums, and if any specific method exists to analyze and select exhibitions for a complete annual program. Interviews conducted with several directors and experts have confirmed that, in general, the decision-making process within cultural institutions is intuitive and based on the experience and subjectivity of the director, who has an artistic background but sometimes lacks experience in arts management. In order to address this subject, this study applied the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) to CaixaForum Barcelona, an important cultural institution in Spain, and analyzed the decision-making process followed while selecting artists and topics for a temporary exhibition. This research contributes to a new decision-making method and the improvement of exhibition scheduling in arts organizations.

Understanding the role of the art museum in teaching clinical-level medical students.

INTRODUCTION: The role of the visual arts in medical education has been understudied, especially with regard to program evaluation and learner assessment of complex competencies such as professional identity, team building, and tolerance for ambiguity. We designed a study to explore how an integrative art museum-based program might benefit 3rd and 4th year medical students. METHODS: We piloted 6 sessions with 18 participants. Evaluation methods included post-session surveys and semi-structured focus groups, which we qualitatively analyzed using an open-coding method. RESULTS: Seven themes emerged from the analysis related to the overarching realms of 'form' and 'function.' 'Form' themes included structural elements of the sessions that enabled engagement: (1) group format, (2) methods (e.g., discussion prompts, activities), (3) setting (e.g., physical space of the museum, temporal space), and (4) objects (e.g., paintings, sculptures). 'Function' themes included the personal and professional value and meaning derived from the sessions: (1) appreciation of others, (2) critical skills, and (3) personal inquiry. DISCUSSION: Our results expand what is known about the role of the visual arts in medical education by suggesting that the visual arts may facilitate clinically relevant learning across a range of competencies via specific formal aspects (group format, method, setting, objects) of art museum-based pedagogical methods.

An intimate connection: Exploring the visual art experiences of persons with dementia.

The purpose of this study is to describe and discuss the art experience of persons with dementia taking part in guided museum tours at a Norwegian art museum. The analysis is based on semi-structured open-ended interviews with participants and researcher field notes. The results demonstrate the capacity and willingness of persons with dementia to reach out and connect on a personal level with the artworks. We identified four experiential dimensions: (1) a new way of seeing, (2) being lifted out of everyday life, (3) activating emotional and bodily responses and (4) connecting art and life. Our findings draw attention to the existential dimensions of the art experience and show that dementia-friendly programmes can offer individuals with dementia a way to stay connected both to themselves and to the wider community through active participation in a cultural discourse. This is the first research study conducted in this emerging field in a Norwegian context.

Twelve Tips for Starting a Collaboration with an Art Museum.

In recent years, collaboration between medical educators and art museum educators has emerged as an important trend. The museum environment can support a kind of professional reflection and conversation that is difficult to develop in a medical setting. Skills such as close looking, empathic communication, resilience, and cultural awareness may also be developed in the art museum when plans for the visit are developed with attention to their relevance to health professions. Working across disciplines requires identifying and cultivating a strong partner as well as clear communication about goals and possibilities. The following tips were developed by museum educators based on their extensive experience working with medical students, interns, residents and faculty at Harvard Medical School and the University of Texas at Austin's Dell Medical School over the past twelve years.

Designing Visual-Arts Education Programs for Transfer Effects: Development and Experimental Evaluation of (Digital) Drawing Courses in the Art Museum Designed to Promote Adolescents' Socio-Emotional Skills.

An active engagement with arts in general and visual arts in particular has been hypothesized to yield beneficial effects beyond arts itself. So-called cognitive and socio-emotional "transfer" effects into other domains have been claimed. However, the empirical basis of these hopes is limited. This is partly due to a lack of experimental comparisons, theory-based designs, and objective measurements in the literature on transfer effects of arts education. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to design and experimentally investigate a theory-based visual-arts education program for adolescents aged between 12 and 19 years (M age = 15.02, SD age = 1.75). The program was delivered in a museum context in three sessions and was expected to yield specific and objectively measurable transfer effects. To conduct a randomized field trial, three strictly parallelized and standardized art courses were developed, all of which addressed the topic of portrait drawing. The courses mainly differed regarding their instructional focus, which was either on periods of art history, on the facial expression of emotions, or on the self-perception of a person in the context of different social roles. In the first and more "traditional" course portrait drawing was used to better understand how portraits looked like in former centuries. The two other courses were designed in a way that the artistic engagement in portrait drawing was interwoven with practicing socio-emotional skills, namely empathy and emotion recognition in one course and understanding complex self-concept structures in the other. We expected positive socio-emotional transfer effects in the two "psychological" courses. We used an animated morph task to measure emotion recognition performance and a self-concept task to measure the self-complexity of participants before and after all three courses. Results indicate that an instructional focus on drawing the facial expressions of emotions yields specific improvements in emotion recognition, whereas drawing persons in different social roles yields a higher level of self-complexity in the self-concept task. In contrast, no significant effects on socio-emotional skills were found in the course focussing on art history. Therefore, our study provides causal evidence that visual-arts programs situated in an art-museum context can advance socio-emotional skills, when designed properly.

The Online Art Museum.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. With the onset of the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic, we transformed an in-person art museum-based course for medical students into an online format. This brought new challenges but offered unexpected advantages. The course included daily close-looking of artworks using the Visual Thinking Strategies method, group arts-based activities, reflective writing, and independent creating assignments. The virtual format allowed us to incorporate important features that were unavailable in our in-person elective: multi-media activities, access to nearly unlimited international works of art, and personal reflection from one's private space. As instructors, the experience enlightened us on the value of online arts-based teaching.

Visits to figurative art museums may lower blood pressure and stress.

BACKGROUND: The research aimed to assess, through physiological measurements such as blood pressure and heart rate, whether exposure to art museums and to different art styles (figurative vs. modern art) was able to enhance visitors' well-being in terms of relaxing and stress reduction. METHOD: Participants (n = 77) were randomly assigned to one of three conditions, on the basis of the typology of the art style they were exposed to in the museum visit: (1) figurative art, (2) modern art and (3) museum office (as a control condition). Blood pressure and heart rate were measured before and after the visits. RESULTS: Diastolic values of the participants were quite stable, as expected in people who do not suffer hypertension; we therefore considered only variations in systolic blood pressure. The majority of the participants exposed to figurative art significantly decreased systolic blood pressure compared to those exposed to modern art and museum office. No differences were found in the heart rate before and after the visit for the three groups. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that museum visits can have health benefits, and figurative art may decrease systolic blood pressure.

Art museum-based intervention to promote emotional well-being and improve quality of life in people with dementia: The ARTEMIS project.

ARTEMIS (ART Encounters: Museum Intervention Study) is an art-based intervention designed especially for people with dementia and their care partners that involves a combination of museum visits and artistic activity. This paper reports the results of a randomized wait-list controlled study on the influence of the ARTEMIS intervention on the emotional state, well-being, and quality of life of dementia patients. People with mild-to-moderate dementia (n = 44) and their care partners (n = 44) visited the Frankfurt Städel Museum once a week on six pre-arranged occasions. The intervention consisted of six different guided art tours (60 minutes), followed by art-making in the studio (60 minutes). Independent museum visits served as a control condition. A mixed-methods design was used to assess several outcomes including cognitive status, emotional well-being, self-rated aspects of quality of life, and subjective evaluations by informal caregivers. In a pre-post-assessment, we found significant improvements in participants' self-rated quality of life (t = -3.15, p < .05). In a situational assessment of emotional well-being immediately before and after each of the museum sessions, we were able to demonstrate statistically significant positive changes with medium effect sizes (dcorr = .74-.77). Furthermore, the total Neuropsychiatric Inventory score as well as the affective (depressed mood and anxiety) and apathy subscales were significantly lower after the ARTEMIS intervention (tNPI total = 2.43; tNPI affective = 2.24; tNPI apathy = 2.52; p < .05). The results show that art museum-based art interventions are able to improve the subjective well-being, mood, and quality of life in people with dementia. This promising psychosocial approach deserves further attention in future studies and consideration in community-based dementia care programs.