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Art tries to
imitate life for Alzheimer's patients
(February
2006 Issue)
By Jennifer Chase Esposito
"Art therapy" conjures images of kids and adults communicating
through puppets, song and crafts, if they can't verbally. And in
recent years, Alzheimer's disease experts have found that observing
art can be just as effective a tool for increasing communication
in Alzheimer's patients as creating it.
Three museums in New England (with more on the way across the country)
are reaching out to people with Alzheimer's and their families by
making available their collections to all of their patrons. By going
to elegant, erudite venues like New York's Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA), Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and the Bruce Museum
of Arts and Sciences in Greenwich, Conn., people with Alzheimer's
are viewing art in hopes of rekindling memories thanks to the brushstrokes
and dots of artists both famous and nameless.
"We don't really see it as 'therapy,' but as treatment," says John
Zeisel, Ph.D., who with Creative Director Sean Caulfield founded
the Hearthstone Alzheimer's Family Foundation and the Hearthstone
Alzheimer Care, Ltd. Hearthstone is based on the non-pharmacologic
treatments for Alzheimer's disease that focus on the effects art,
music and physical environment can have.
Hearthstone also provides assisted living facilities with programs
like Artists 4 Alzheimer's, which brings volunteer artists of all
kinds to work with clients in the comfort of their own residences.
Zeisel says there's a difference between going to a museum and
seeing a painting and sitting around a table and drawing: he prefers
the term "art experience" over "art therapy."
"When you go to a museum, you're having an experience of the art.
There's no pressure to behave a certain way; no goal, as in therapy,
to get you happy or less depressed."
According to Zeisel, what happens to Alzheimer's sufferers viewing
art is that their anxiety is reduced. "There's no perfect answer.
They don't have to say the right thing," he says. Then, they're
using parts of their brain that are still undamaged by the disease.
And for some dementia patients, they gain artistic skills. "Nobody
realizes that," he says. "The artwork turns on the whole brain."
Zeisel and Caulfield have created and implemented Alzheimer-specific
museum tours at the MoMA and are talking with the Fuller-Kraft Museum
in Brockton, Mass., and the Taft Museum in Cleveland, Ohio to do
the same. Here's how the programs work: educators at the museums
are trained in understanding the functions of the brain and the
kinds of approaches used to facilitate discussion with the Alzheimer's
art observer. They're also coached in how to treat people in the
early stages of the illnesses, where memory loss and recognition
may not yet be pronounced. Paintings are shown to Alzheimer's patrons,
like Picasso's "The Four Musicians," in hopes that they may trigger
the viewer to remember something or someone they've lost in their
minds.
In Greenwich and Boston, two other museums are doing Alzheimer's
outreach. The Bruce Museum's pilot program, "Lifetime of Looking,"
was developed and incorporated into the Bruce's existing outreach
program five months ago after a docent suggested such a program
might be beneficial to her mother, who has Alzheimer's.
Robin Garr, the Bruce's educational director, says the program's
goal is to evoke verbalization in Alzheimer's sufferers so they
talk about and exercise their memories as much as possible.
"It starts with a very simple museum approach," says Garr, which
prompts the art viewer to answer, "What do you see going on?" Says
Garr, it's "exactly what museum education is all about."
Around the same time as the Bruce, Boston's MFA launched a similar
program called "Access to Art" when requests started coming in from
individuals and organizations for programming for adults with disabilities.
"We developed tours in response to that," says Hannah Goodwin,
coordinator of accessibility at the MFA. A lot of people with Alzheimer's
tend to be isolated, she said. When they're at the museum, they
enter a situation where someone is thinking of them, bringing them
into a world they were probably a part of. Says Goodwin: "Art, itself,
is really a powerful connection."
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