--excerpted from News and Events (Nov/Dec 2006)

What does looking at art have to do with the medical field? Nurses at the University of Chicago Hospitals have recently had the opportunity to find out. During a 90-minute program led by Sarah Alvarez, assistant director of adult programs in the Art Institute’s Museum Education Department, nursing residents from the University of Chicago closely examine artworks in order to engage their senses and increase their responsiveness to visual cues.

In September 2005, Rhonda Blender, MSN, RN, and director of the University of Chicago Hospitals Academy Nursing Program, teamed up with Alvarez to develop a presentation that could be incorporated into the patient-analysis section of the nurse residency program. Titled "The Discerning Eye: Visual Observation Skills from the Art Museum to Patient Diagnosis," the session encourages interactive discussion so participants can learn what triggers their visual interest and how they translate this information when interacting with others. Blender notes that the program helps the nurses to consider what factors they look at when first examining a patient, to analyze whether the first thing they see is the most important, and to decipher how they mentally and visually organize the material they observe.

Claude Monet. Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890–91. Potter Palmer Collection.

Presented to groups of 15 to 20 students, the session focuses on several artworks from the Art Institute’s collection, including African masks and paintings such as Monet’s Stacks of Wheat, Picasso’s The Old Guitarist, and Ivan Albright’s Picture of Dorian Gray. Each artwork is examined not necessarily for its historical significance but rather for the way it makes the eye organize visual information. When conceiving the program, Blender first approached Alvarez with images of Monet’s Stacks of Wheat, noting how each picture, while similar in subject matter, has strikingly different lighting effects and composition. Through calling attention to these differences, Blender hoped to enhance the nurses’ ability to perceive the minute changes in condition that can happen to their patients between rounds, and to notice how changes can occur not only in the patients themselves but also in their surroundings.

Claude Monet. Stack of Wheat (Snow Effect, Overcast Day), 1890–91. Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection.

As the program took shape, other artworks were included to help participants create order out of a busy scene, become more sensitive to cultural differences, and sense mental or physical problems. In the case of Picasso’s The Old Guitarist, nurses use their diagnostic skills in order to evaluate the central figure of the painting. Certain visual clues of the piece—its blue color, the man’s posture, and his body language—give the nurses the information they need to develop a valid diagnosis. They are then shown an x-ray of the painting, which reveals a hidden image, to emphasize the possibility that not all diagnostic cues may be present on the surface.

"The Discerning Eye" brings the museum’s Art in the Workplace program, which offers art education to working professionals, to a new audience. In doing so, the Art Institute also joins the select group of prestigious museums that work with medical professionals. Several museums, such as the Frick Collection in New York, also have programs for medical students and other professionals such as members of the police force and social services. These programs increase awareness by facilitating opportunities for detailed looking at the artwork that is presented.

This program is one of a number of ways that the museum strives to make artwork tangible and relevant to a wide range of its visitors. By reaching out to the medical field and other occupations, programs such as "The Discerning Eye" teach professionals how to wade through our world’s increasing visual stimuli and extract the critical observations needed to make informed decisions.

For information about how to bring The Discerning Eye to your workplace or program, call (312) 443-3680 or e-mail artexpress@artic.edu.