How does visiting an art museum make you feel? Energized? Exhausted? Inspired? Or maybe frustrated? (You call that art?) Researchers want to know. A growing number of studies being conducted in the United States and elsewhere have been focused on the degree to which art museums promote in their visitors a sense of well-being—a nebulous term that James O. Pawelski, professor and director of education in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, defines in “Art museums as institutions for human flourishing” as “the cultivation of strengths, meaning, and positive states and traits” that allow us to flourish. He pointed out that well-being and flourishing don’t just mean leaving “in a good mood” but, rather, that one has gained “a sense of empathy, feeling less isolated and with a broader sense of other peoples’ experiences.”
The American Alliance of Museums is currently conducting a three-year study to “help museums measure their social impact, which can include health and well-being outcomes for visitors,” according to a spokeswoman for the organization. Well-functioning art museums bring disparate people together for a shared experience, and it is the goal of the researchers involved, as well as museum officials, to find ways that intensify visitors’ feelings of being part of something that breaks them out of their routines.
The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, is conducting its own research into this issue, having just been approved for a National Endowment for the Arts Research Grants in the Arts award of $80,000 to support a two-year well-being study examining the social, emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual effects of art museum visitation on diverse adult populations. The study is being conducted in partnership with Brenau University in Gainesville, Georgia and with the Atlanta-based arts and health research firm Performance Hypothesis, which will support protocol and data collection.
Barbara Steinhaus, a professor at Brenau and one of the lead investigators in the study, told Observer that a 2019 report released by the World Health Organization found that people who attended an arts event or participated in a group art activity reduced their feeling of social isolation by 17 percent. “We’re looking at the impact an art museum has on a visitor,” she said, “and how people are impacted physically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. Once you get there, you internalize what you’re viewing and the new ideas that come to you, but you also have an emotional reaction that resonates with the different ‘selves’ we have.”
This all might suggest that going to a museum, or art generally, is a form of therapy, and much of the research into the subject of museums and well-being refers to emotional, mental and physical health. Steinhaus herself teaches an Arts in Healthcare course that “focuses on utilizing art for both patients and healthcare workers. We engage in a variety of artistic endeavors to encourage the mental and emotional well-being of healthcare workers. Art, poetry, music—all of these things are just one way to develop self-care methods that provide for the spirit and rest the mind.”
Ruggieri, however, cautions against equating well-being with wellness. The former enables the individual to function well as an individual and in society, while “wellness is temporary ‘care’ that is generally sought to relieve or prevent stress or other common disorders.”
One might also ask if it is important for museums to promote mental (and physical) health. Isn’t the goal of art to unsettle us rather than to make us feel good about ourselves—to “afflict the comfortable,” as the saying goes? If I look at Edvard Munch’s The Scream, should I feel a sense of well-being or, instead, the sense of anxiety that the artist presumably intended?
Steinhaus claims that both feelings can coexist. When looking at artwork that intends to unsettle, “a viewer may feel a range of emotions, perhaps starting with anxiety, but also leading to a feeling of solidarity. Everyone feels tough emotions sometimes, including anxiety, so for some, viewing art that creates a visual scene of what’s in their head can be a comfort; the viewer may feel less alone knowing someone else is also screaming. For a young person learning to manage stress and anxiety, knowing a famous artist also had panic attacks and created something incredible from the experience can be a light in the darkness.”
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For some, a museum is a place to learn and to be challenged—one that “forces us to consider viewpoints radically different than our own,” Seattle-based museum consultant and researcher Susie Wilkening told Observer. Many visitors enjoy confronting images and ideas that challenge their preconceived notions. But she added that for others, a museum is a respite—an escape from everyday life. Both experiences may offer visitors a sense of well-being, although those seeking a refuge from the world might not experience Pawelski’s “cultivation of strengths, meaning, and positive states and traits” if they encounter artworks that seemingly scream about contemporary social problems and question the viewers’ elitism for going to such an institution in the first place. Perhaps the job of the curators and education staff at museums is to find ways of telling a story through art that, at least, helps visitors understand why some artist created this thing. Understanding is, after all, an element of well-being.
Well-being remains a hard-to-pin-down concept, and there is no reason to assume that art museums do a better job of providing it than a zoo, an opera house or a gymnasium. Pawelski pointed out that well-being is not synonymous with “feeling good” since he gets a feeling of well-being—often after the fact—from working out. “When I go to the gym, I don’t feel good all the time, usually the opposite. I sweat and I think I’m going to die, but I know there is a beneficial effect on my muscles, heart and brain.”
