Art On Prescription: How Museums Are Becoming Spaces Of Healing

BERLIN — No, not a punch to the chin, not a jab to the nose, but a gentle “tap on the neck” – why not? Bruce Nauman still believes that art should catch us off guard. Ideally, it “just knocks us over,” he once said in an interview. An assault on the soul.

Many artists have taken a similar approach to Nauman, one of the heroes of American modernism. They saw their main task as unsettling, provoking and stirring people up. How else could they rip the world from its false sense of peace? How else could they have fought complacency? Bloody, dark and tasteless in all the right ways — art was supposed to shake up our awareness. Their favorite method: shock therapy.

Where museums were once arenas of conflict, they now promise calm and peace above all else.

Today, knocking things over is a lot harder to do. Blows to the neck and other forms of well-meaning violence are no longer in demand. The fury once associated with art has given way to an unexpected gentleness. Where museums were once arenas of conflict, they now promise calm and peace above all else.

The old avant-garde belief that humanity must be redeemed and improved still lingers. But now, shock and upheaval have given way to introspection as the preferred therapeutic method. Art wants us to soften. To breathe. To make our hearts smile.

The Bode Museum in Berlin, known for its magnificent sculptures, has recently taken up this very sort of self-reflection. Through a project that doesn’t even want to be called a project. What’s currently on display in Room 24 is meant as a reimagining of the museum itself: because nothing here is intended to be viewed in the usual way. It’s not about analysis, and certainly not about judgment. It’s about feeling. About feeling ourselves again.

Art like never before

Right at the entrance sits a large box filled with thick cushions. Anyone who likes can settle into the spacious museum room, in front of one of the Italian Baroque sculptures, like the graceful Hercules with his club, or before one of the two Buddhas on loan from the nearby Museum of Islamic Art. Most visitors don’t need much prompting: Sometimes there are 20 or 30 people sitting cross-legged and very upright on their cushions, many with eyes closed. They’ve never experienced art like this before.

Access to art improves people’s mental and psychological health.

The exhibition is called “The Healing Museum,” but a better name might be “The Mindset Museum.” Visitors can access meditations via smartphone or audio guide. These don’t refer to individual artworks at all. Instead, they focus on softening, on mindfulness, on the inner smile. “A piece of art is inside you. And a part of you is now in the piece,” says a male voice, slowly, very slowly. He doesn’t say exactly which part.

For several years now, museums have been searching for a new purpose. They no longer want to be mere display cases for a more or less pleasant past. They want to reclaim their place in the present, to be socially relevant. And above all, to be a constructive force.

For some time, the Bode Museum has also described itself as a “place of refuge,” and the curators — once solely focused on researching and preserving rare sculptures — are now tasked with offering comfort and instilling hope, especially for people at risk of suicide.

The museum has entered into a “cooperation with the Berlin Crisis Service to support people in existential distress. A museum takes on social responsibility,” as the website puts it. There, staff members speak about “their own struggles.” They describe how a work of art can help someone get through a crisis — even one that feels impossible to overcome. And so a new story has begun to take hold in this temple of bourgeois education: The story “of how art makes life easier.”

A new medication

In recent years, helping and healing have become something like the guiding principle for many artists and numerous collections. At the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada, there’s already a director of Education and Wellness, and elsewhere, wellness consultants are being hired. Meanwhile, new scientific studies are appearing all the time claiming to show how art can benefit our health. Van Gogh for dementia? Monet for depression? Or maybe Rembrandt to prevent burnout?

“Access to art improves people’s mental and psychological health — it makes us happier and healthier,” Matt Hancock, then British Health Secretary, said a few years ago.

Susan Magsamen from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine calls it an “evolutionary superpower.” So it’s no surprise that in countries like Belgium and Switzerland, doctors can now prescribe museum visits. This kind of doctor-endorsed art remedy is called social prescription. And it promises not only relief for patients but also a break for overstretched health insurers. A Rothko or a Renoir always costs less than a shot or a pill. You don’t have to take it, you just have to look at it.

Most studies can’t say exactly how art works. All they know is this: something happens.

But what is the right dose? Are 10 minutes a day enough? Do substitutes like postcards or online images have the same effect? What are the known side effects? Should people with anxiety avoid Munch? And are there artists particularly suited to serve as all-purpose cures?

So far, there are no clear answers. Most studies can’t say exactly how art works. All they know is this: something happens. Often something big. In a wide-ranging study conducted six years ago, University College London found that people who regularly visit museums or engage in cultural activities have a 30% lower risk of early death than average. Eternal art, eternal life?

The meditation program at the Healing Museum in the Bode Museum is also getting scientific backing. The Clinical Research Center at the nearby Charité hospital and the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine are involved. Starting this week, patients with chronic illnesses will be given free tickets to visit the exhibition. Afterward, they’ll be asked about their thoughts and feelings.

For the first time, the follow-up study will look not only at the psychological healing effects of art viewing, but also at how museum visits might help with diseases of the central nervous system, including multiple sclerosis. There is “great potential,” says Charité study leader Friedemann Paul.

A return to silence

Entirely new ideas and responsibilities are now landing on the desks of art historians. Where they once focused on drapery, skin tones and dramatic gestures, and wrestled with issues of authenticity and attribution, now they are being drawn into the world of hormones — and what used to be artificial is starting to feel very natural. Suddenly, museum press releases are talking about cortisol, serotonin and oxytocin – that is, how art should be seen first and foremost as a physical experience that lowers stress, promotes sleep and lifts mood in surprising ways. Form has become a matter of fitness.

But why set up a showdown between the humanities and the sciences? María López-Fanjul, curator of The Healing Museum, isn’t interested in making that distinction. She chose the sculptures and paintings in Room 24 to foster a cultural conversation: Among world religions, each of which has its own meditation traditions and sees art as a tool for contemplation. At the same time, López-Fanjul aims to revive a kind of intuitive artistic experience that had long been forgotten or dismissed as outdated.

Here, silence is no longer feared but cherished.

Indeed, the quiet restraint now on display at the Bode Museum is radical in its own right. Here, silence is no longer feared but cherished. For decades, museums were swept up in a kind of frantic push for public attention; what counted was visitor numbers. Only noise and bustle seemed to signal importance. That withdrawing from the world could be meaningful didn’t occur to anyone.

Museums might be valuable not just for the knowledge and truth they convey, but for the inner reflection they offer their visitors.

And that museums might be valuable not just for the knowledge and truth they convey, but for the inner reflection they offer their visitors, was almost completely forgotten. Only now, with the arrival of art’s new promises of healing, is old-fashioned contemplation being rediscovered. The spirit, it seems, is back.

Art should comfort

There is much talk these days about slowing down, about shedding the rush of daily life. The goal is to approach art with a clear mind and open heart. “So that we can truly see and truly feel,” as one of the Bode Museum’s meditations puts it. The idea is to leave behind the usual habit of darting past artworks, five seconds here, eight seconds there. Here, lingering becomes the new way of experiencing art.

At first glance, it might seem as though the ancient and Christian works — the marble and bronze gods, the carved altars, the gentle-looking Madonnas — are being reclaimed as they were once intended: as objects of devotion and worship. Before they ever entered a museum, they were often viewed as more than just representations of a higher power. For many, that power felt tangibly present in the art itself. Art was sacred. But there is no talk of such things in The Healing Museum. And even less of religion.

Everyone is invited to project their own needs into the artworks.

Most visitors today can no longer connect with the art and its largely Christian messages, says curator López-Fanjul. Many feel overwhelmed, even diminished, by their own lack of knowledge. So they turn away – not only from the art, but also from the religious world evoked by it. The museum becomes a place of estrangement.

The Healing Museum hopes to respond to this by opening paths that go beyond knowledge — a kind of faith without God. In a way, the artworks are doubly stripped of their sacredness: neither their devotional power nor their aesthetic value is the point anymore. What matters now is the self — a self that should be calm, gentle, deeply relaxed, and assured that it is in good hands with art. “Welcome to your body, welcome to the museum.”

Many visitors, López-Fanjul explains, do not feel represented in the collection. Their lives, their beliefs, their perspectives are not reflected in the works. That is one more reason why new approaches are needed — ones that blend intensity, intimacy and a comforting sense of freedom. Everyone is invited to project their own needs into the artworks, to feel what speaks to them in the moment.

A current craving

The old ideal of shock, of estrangement, of shaking people out of their usual selves, has little room in a museum focused on softening. Here, calm is all about reassurance. Troubled souls come seeking peace. That is why, as López-Fanjul says, people should feel at home in the museum. Some take off their shoes, others lie down. This too is part of the new art of wellness: the cozy vibe of a living room.

Avant-garde artists often had a therapeutic mission as well. Joseph Beuys, for instance, the self-styled shaman who spoke of wounds and healing forces. Or Lygia Clark, the Brazilian artist currently featured at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, who aimed to restore her audience with her Objetos Relacionais. But unlike today, the healing impulse of artists 40 or 50 years ago was closely tied to a social vision. The goal wasn’t just to heal the individual but to mend a world sickened by capitalism.

The museum has become a kind of medical supply shop.

Given all the upheaval and disruption – the pandemic, the war, the brutal state of politics – today’s craving for comfort is easy to understand. Art is supposed to soothe the desolate. To patch up, at least for a while, the cracks running through people and the world alike. But the idea of boundary-breaking, of challenging the authority of real conditions, no longer plays a role in today’s notion of healing.

The museum has become a kind of medical supply shop, far removed from the world. “You are held and you are safe,” says the meditation’s calming voice. “There is nothing you need to change, nothing to improve, nothing to understand.”