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ART AND
your attention? Discuss the narrative story as it relates to the painting trained several museums and medical schools. Over the years several
– some students know that it is a story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
in which the god Zeus assumes the form of a bull to seduce the mor-
tal woman, Europa. What happened before and after this moment?
Look closely and take the poses of figures in the painting. Then the
class is asked to turn their backs once more to the “Abduction of
Europa” and identify the figures who are looking directly at them.
Only three out of the 30 students get the answer correctly, and this
has occurred every year for three years. After 45 minutes of looking
and discussing the painting, students are surprised that they did not
observe closely enough to answer this question. We then compared
this experience to making a physical examination, looking at a pa-
tient with a diagnosis in mind yet missing key details that could
make a difference in the diagnosis. The point is made! We think we
see and remember but we need to learn how to observe more closely
and provide evidence of our observations whether it is looking at a
patient or a work of art.
Introduction to Medical School and
Art Museum Partnerships
Observation, visual inspection with interpretation and verbal
communication of one’s findings are essential skills in medical prac-
tice. These skills can be learned utilizing master works of art to teach
medical students “visual literacy,” which is the ability to reason
pathophysiology from careful, unbiased observation. Looking care-
fully at art involves analyzing the entire work before making judg-
ments or interpretations.
These approaches to analyzing works of art have led to embrac-
ing a more humanistic understanding of health and well-being;
part of a movement towards improving new physicians’ clinical
training. Medical students, residents, physicians and nurses who
engage in looking at works of art from different periods in history
and different cultures have been studied by many medical schools
and the results of these studies document a dramatic increase in
observation, understanding, analysis, problem solving and collab-
orative communication.
Over the years, there has been an expansion of both the number
and types of programs and partnerships. In 1999, Dr. Irwin Braver-
man, Yale School of Medicine, and Linda Friedlaender, Senior Cu-
rator of Education at Yale Center for British Art, collaborated on
the first program to enhance observational skills of first-year med-
ical students. Additionally, they conducted a controlled study, pub-
lished three years later in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, as part of Dr. Jacqueline Dolev’s medical school thesis,
which showed that museum intervention did indeed enhance stu-
dents’ observational skills. Their work inspired other medical
schools to develop partnerships with art museums and they have
MEDICINE
medical schools decided to create courses of six-to-10 sessions with
durations of one-to-two hours that include actively teaching by
both medical professionals and art museum educators. The expan-
sion of the number of courses, seminars and workshops has been a
core component of the growth of this field of medical humanities
largely because the museum and the medical school create programs
that meet their shared goals and support the continuation of these
unique partnerships.
In 2011, the Harvard Art Museum presented “Cultivating Hu-
manism: A Symposium on Medicine and the Arts,” organized by
Ray Williams, Former Director of Education at the Harvard Art
Museum and currently Director of Academic Affairs at Blanton Mu-
seum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. This daylong, in-
teractive CME event cultivated personal reflection and renewal and
helped physicians and museum educators further investigate the so-
cial and cultural facets of wellness, illness and death through works
of art. This is another aspect of the importance of medical education
programs that involve dentists, nurses, physician assistants, physical
therapists and other healthcare professionals.
The Art of Examination: Art Museums and Medical School Part-
nerships Forum was a landmark gathering that brought together
more than 135 leading professionals in the medical education and
museum education fields at a two-day convening in June 2016, or-
ganized and funded by The Edith O'Donnell Institute of Art His-
tory, The University of Texas at Dallas and held at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York City. The Art of Examination Forum was
the largest gathering of professionals dedicated to this work and the
first time that many of these professionals had an opportunity to ex-
change information and ideas about these programs. Ten recom-
mendations developed by the Forum are included at the end of the
Report on the Forum.
The presentations and knowledgeable voices of both museum and
medical school professionals with long-standing partnerships pro-
vided a sound overview of the fields’ best practices, goals, history,
approaches to teaching, terminology, evaluation, challenges and fu-
ture direction. Information on research and evaluation studies was
also shared. The scope, length and format of the workshops and
courses varied. The Art of Examination: Art Museums and Medical
School Partnerships Forum developed a list of over 70 programs that
attests to and endorses the value of arts and humanities-based edu-
cation in medical education.
There is an excellent body of literature, primarily published in
medical journals, that addresses the pedagogy of these programs and
evaluation of their impact on students. Additionally, the Report
from the Art of Examination Forum and other resources are avail-
able. These resources can be found on The Edith O’Donnell Insti-
continued on page 16
visit us at www.bcms.org 15