The Art of Medicine

“What do you see?”

The group of 30 medical students and radiology residents gathered around Picasso’s painting Le Moulin de la Galette (above) at the Guggenheim Museum enthusiastically offer opinions about the painting’s meaning or who the figures in the scene might be. But Cyra Levenson, the museum’s deputy director for education and public engagement, gently presses the group to observe rather than analyze by answering her original question: What do you see?

The museum visit last spring, part of a pilot program at Weill Cornell Medicine, aims to help students actively recognize and address how their own preconceived notions can influence the care they provide. Based on Levenson’s previous collaboration with Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art (where she worked) and the Yale School of Medicine, the event supports the idea that studying visual art can create a space for critical conversations, as well as inspire collaboration and community.

“So much of our education is centered around the hospital and other medical-centric physical locations,” says Dr. Janine Katzen, associate dean of admissions, who co-organized the event with Levenson. “With patient-centered care, medicine is now being approached with a wider lens, allowing for a broader perspective of the patient.”

Arts-based programs and inquiry-based visual thinking strategies pedagogy are increasingly part of medical school curricula around the country as medical educators recognize the impact arts and humanities courses can have on training and practice. “Being aware of our biases is the most important first step in being able to move beyond them,” explains Dr. Katzen, who is also an associate professor of clinical radiology. “The humanities help us grow and evolve as physicians and as people.”

At the Guggenheim, the group separated preconceived assumptions about what the figures in the Picasso might be doing versus what was on the canvas. “I wasn’t used to breaking down the composition, the content, the colors, the people,” explains second-year medical student Téa Cohen. But by the end of the night, the importance of objectivity — at a museum and in the examining room — was apparent.

“Allowing the patient to tell their story helps get the facts straight, so [as doctors] we’re not overlooking something,” Cohen says. “Often, our first instinct is to project our own ideas onto whatever we’re looking at or whomever we’re speaking with, making possibly harmful assumptions about them and their situation.”

“Exposure to the humanities can expand our ways of thinking, encouraging us to move past biases,” Dr. Katzen adds. “As opposed to thinking in absolutes, we recognize there is an art to the practice of medicine.”