It’s Saturday morning. You are barely awake, with a cup of coffee in your hand, and your gaze wanders to the window. It’s raining. So you make up your mind. This afternoon, you’ll go to a museum.
But what if, without realizing it, you only made a great decision on your health?
That’s the hypothesis recommend by the Association of French-speaking Doctors of Canada in 2018, when it launched the museum prescriptions program in partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The project, now accomplished, has enabled hundreds of patients to get a physician’s prescription to go to a museum, either on their very own or accompanied. The aim of the prescription was to advertise the recovery and well-being of patients with chronic illnesses (hypertension, diabetes), neurological conditions, cognitive disorders or mental health problems. The decision to put in writing the prescription was left to the discretion of the doctor.
Five years in, this pioneering initiative has inspired other modern projects. So we at the moment are seeing an increasing variety of museum-based wellness activities starting from museum yoga to guided meditations with artistic endeavors, in addition to the practice of slow contemplation or “slow looking.”
There’s no shortage of possibilities, and so they all help to strengthen the identical idea, that art is sweet for us.
Beyond first impressions
These initiatives have recently made headlines in national media on each side of the Atlantic, in France and Canadaand are gaining in visibility in most people. Because of the recognition of those activities, increasingly claims are being made that a visit to the museum can have “powerful anti-stress properties,” be a “miracle cure for stress,” or produce other “incredible advantages.”
Talk about enthusiasm!
Yet, as an authorized neuroscientist, I can’t help but wonder why, given the extraordinarily relaxing effects which might be being claimed, crowds aren’t flocking to our museums each day.
And that provides us all of the more reason to take a look at the scientific reports and studies which have recently been published on the topic.
Is art good for you? From intuition to commentary
In 2019, the World Health Organization published an in depth report compiling evidence on the role of arts and cultural activities in promoting health and well-being. The authors of this report attempted to maneuver away from the sweeping claim that the advantages of art could constitute a universal solution to health problems, like a sort of home cure.
Instead, they encourage recent, more precise and rigorous approaches to the query, based on commentary of the psychological, physiological and behavioural responses induced by certain specific components of artistic activity (aesthetic engagement, sensory stimulation, physical activity, etc.).
Actor or spectator?
What’s specific a few museum visit is that it’s a so-called receptive artistic activity – in other words, it just isn’t about producing art (painting, drawing, composing). It does, nevertheless, have the advantage of being accessible and already well established in our collective habits, making it a great candidate for health prevention.
The query is whether or not art exposure, alone, is sufficient to reap its advantages. In other words, does the easy fact of being involved with art have specific effects?
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Healthier consumers of culture
Research has been carried out in England on samples of several thousand individuals whose long-term health indicators were monitored, and who were asked for 10 years to report on their habits when it comes to cultural and artistic activities.
This research shows that individuals who recurrently (every two or three months, or more) visit cultural venues (theatres, opera houses, museums, galleries) have a 50 per cent lower risk of dementia and depressionand a 40 per cent lower risk of developing a geriatric frailty syndrome (age-related decline in health and lack of functional independence).
Does that mean that exposure to art could lead on to healthier aging?
Perhaps, but whether cultural involvement is the explanation for the advance in health markers observed in these studies, has yet to be confirmed. To do that, cohort studies and randomized controlled trials are required. However, this sort of study has yet to be done.
In search of the lively ingredients
There is one other query, and it’s a giant one! It’s the query of .
Why would art, and visual art specifically, do me good? What happens in my body once I encounter a murals, and the way does this contact transform me and help to maintain me healthier – if so?
This was the query Mikaela Law, a psychology researcher on the University of Auckland in New Zealand, and her colleagues asked in 2021. They reviewed the scientific literature for studies on the physiological response to the visual arts and its effect on self-reported stress.
Some of the studies listed in her work show that contact with artwork can lower blood pressure, heart rate and the cortisol secreted in saliva. Such changes reflect a discount within the body’s state of guardedness, also called stress. This change appears to be perceived by the person, reflected by the reduction within the stress she or he feels after exposure.
Other studies, alternatively, have observed no effects.
So, if contact with visual art is more likely to bring about physical and psychological rest for the viewer, it is probably not a sufficient condition for improved health.
This conclusion invites us to qualify our conclusions and reflect more deeply on what happens in the mean time of an encounter with a piece that may condition its effects on a person’s psyche.
Today is Saturday…
You’ve decided you’re going to the museum.
This decision will likely be good on your health.
It’s also more likely to depend upon the museum you select, and the way you visit it.
However one thing’s certain: going to a museum means you’ll greatly increase your probabilities of having a pleasing day!