ART MUSEUMS: INSTITUTIONS FOR WELL-BEING

The humanities, understood broadly to include arts and culture, are central to our individual and collective well-being. Throughout history, arts and culture have helped individuals feel connected to each other, providing a deep sense of belonging to their communities. Currently, however, we are experiencing a troubling fraying of these social bonds: rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness are increasing. To promote flourishing for all members of our society, we need a renewed emphasis on the power of arts and culture for human healing and for bringing individuals and groups together in meaningful ways.

Increasingly, communities and nations are turning to art museums to address well-being needs. In a 2019 report, the OECD argues that promoting health and well-being among visitors should be a central goal of art museums. Using social prescribing—an innovative way to connect patients to community resources—doctors in several countries can recommend visits to art museums to treat mental health conditions growing in prevalence, like anxiety, depression, and chronic stress. In the UK, this practice has yielded a 37% reduction in doctor visits and a 27% decrease in hospital admissions, and an association of doctors in Canada (Médecins francophones du Canada) now prescribes patients visits to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, citing evidence that arts engagements impacts serotonin and cortisol levels. Although growing evidence indicates art museum visits can increase well-being, what remains less clear is how and under what conditions these effects occur.

HHF seeks to illuminate the well-being power of art museums. In our work, we emphasize and investigate the mechanisms through which art museum engagement can promote well-being. With this focus, we are able to understand how and why this form of cultural engagement can enhance individual well-being, identify existing museum practices that are well-equipped to impact well-being, and facilitate the development and implementation of new ways to engage with art to optimize human flourishing. We look forward to opportunities to collaborate with museums in completing this work. 

ONGOING WORK

Art Museums and Human Flourishing: Research suggests that visiting art museums is associated with a range of well-being outcomes. But the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed how people are engaging with visual art as most museums were forced to close or greatly restrict visitation. Many museums increased their digital presence to continue to engage with the public. Given the now expansive virtual art-viewing options and the unique benefits of these experiences, it is necessary to understand the well-being potential of engaging with art in a digital environment. This research examined the well-being effects of viewing art in a virtual gallery in four sessions across five weeks and how immersion, a theorized mechanism relevant to art engagement and well-being, may facilitate individual gain in well-being.

Museum Professionals and Well-Being: Are well-being outcomes important to art museums? To learn more about how art museum professionals see their institutions as venues that promote well-being, we will examine the attitudes, strategies, and practices of professionals in the field. Through this project, we will gain insight into institutional motivations of art museums, to what extent museum prioritize well-being, and how they aim to address well-being with visitors.

Core Art Museum Survey for Well-Being: How do art museums support well-being in visitors? It's difficult to answer this question with confidence since art museum well-being research is just beginning and currently relies on disparate measurement strategies, limiting the ability to reach consensus. To further this work, the Humanities and Human Flourishing (HHF) team is creating, testing, and will make freely available a survey instrument to enable researchers and art museum professionals to understand visitor well-being and inform programming and outreach. The Core Art Museum Survey for Well-Being is being developed in collaboration with the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

Building Empathy and Social Connection through Digital Art Engagement: Just as the arts can impact flourishing outcomes directly, they have also been examined as a way for people to cultivate skills (e.g., medical humanities programs designed to hone observational techniques in medical students and residents). In a multi-week longitudinal study using a Virtual Art Museum Lab (VAM Lab), we are examining the cultivation of skills linked to well-being via an arts-centered intervention that includes psychoeducational content on the target skills, virtual visual arts experiences designed to promote skill development, and rigorous experimental assessment of skill development and well-being improvements.