The museum as medical school training ground
Can an art museum make you a better doctor? For University of Minnesota medical students engaging with the Weisman Art Museum, the answer is yes.
“Museums are not just art or art history,” says Katie Covey Spanier (BA, ’10; MA, ’18), director of public engagement and learning at the Weisman Art Museum, affectionately known as WAM. “We are using the museum as a classroom, as a laboratory, as a studio, and … as a site of care.”
While WAM is perhaps best recognized by its angular stainless steel facade perched above the Mississippi River on the University of Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus, it’s what’s happening inside that is helping to shift the perspectives of future physicians.
The Weisman, in partnership with the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Center for the Art of Medicine, will launch “Visual Art + Medicine 7753” this spring, a new course aimed at increasing the observational, interpretative and creative problem-solving skills of future physicians through hands-on art-making and guided gallery discussions.
The reason?
“Research shows us that incorporating arts and humanities into medical education helps us train more thoughtful, resilient physicians,” says Dr. Maren Olson (MD, ’03), an associate professor, pediatric hospitalist and co-director of the Center for the Art of Medicine.
Developed in partnership with the Center for Art and Medicine’s Olson and Dr. Ben Trappey, the class will be led by Covey Spanier (pictured above left) and Ricki Willians (above right), WAM’s public engagement and learning coordinator.
A site of care
“What care can mean in teaching a class like this is we're helping our future physicians be more empathetic,” Covey Spanier says. “We're helping them be better at diagnosis and navigating ambiguity through looking at challenging works of art. And, we're hoping to make them art fans.”
Covey Spanier says that approach can be quite different from the typical medical student experience.
“A lot of the med students who've been at the university for six, seven years may never have spent time in museums looking at art or talking about art,” Covey Spanier says. “So this is a really good opportunity to get comfortable being uncomfortable talking about something they know nothing about. Which is completely different from their role in a clinical setting.”
The course will include hands-on work with a ceramicist, where students use clay to slow down and learn through touch, alongside sound, abstraction, and color-based experiences that deepen listening skills and presence.
Teaching artists who live and work in the Twin Cities in K-12 public schools, community centers and other organizations will help conduct workshops throughout the course, and through that process, both students and artists will use Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), an approach originating with art museums. VTS uses facilitated discussions of art to build critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills.
The model reflects WAM’s broader commitment to hands-on learning — which has been shown to foster empathy, evidence-based interpretation and reflective practice — skills directly transferable to patient encounters.
Breaking the mold to become a better physician
Sanjana Molleti (BA, ’22), a 4th-year medical student from Apple Valley, Minnesota, has taken other courses through the Medical School’s Arts & Medicine Scholarly Concentration with the goal of becoming either an ophthalmologist or pediatrician. She’s enrolling in the new Visual Art + Medicine course in part because of her personal experience as a painter, dancer and singer. Molleti is also a recipient of the Center for Art and Medicine Fisch Art of Medicine award.
With an undergraduate degree in Biology, Society, & Environment from the University of Minnesota’s College of Liberal Arts, Molleti has also long been interested in how science and the humanities intersect.
“As a medical student, and as a future physician, I think that having these types of creative outlets — being able to think out of the box, kind of outside of the scope of our typical work as a medical student — I hope will only make me a better physician,” Molleti says.
She believes the approach is also a counterbalance to the intense demands of medical school.
“Oftentimes, we are so focused on being perfectionists [because medicine requires it] that having art as an outlet and being able to make mistakes through that is really important to break out of that cycle,” Molleti says.
Course sampling: Center for the Art of Medicine
- Reflective writing electives: Helps develop creative and reflective writing skills.
- Medicine in Film: Explores ways in which medical practice, healthcare themes and social issues have been portrayed in film. Includes discussions with Minnesota-based filmmakers.
- Introduction to Historical Health Humanities: Introduces students to a wide range of historical sources, research methods, and creative applications for history as part of health humanities.
The heart - and art - of medicine
"Humanity is at the heart of medicine,” Olson says. “Practicing medicine isn't just about looking up lab results in a computer or prescribing the right medication. Practicing medicine is about caring for real people within the context of the stories that make up their lives. We have to be attentive to the whole person."
And while some medical schools do have humanities programs, Olson says that the focus on having students be not just consumers of the arts and humanities, but to actually engage in creative activities, is quite unusual.
"We've had students tell us that this is why they chose the University of Minnesota Medical School — because they found out about what the Center for the Art of Medicine is doing, and the way that it reflects our values as an institution."
- Dr. Maren Olson
For the Weisman museum, the hope is to further deepen this relationship, not only within health but disciplines across the University — and in doing so, to shift the conception of a museum from a building with beautiful works of art, to an experience with the power to transform our health and lives.
“Initiatives like working with the Center for the Art of Medicine, within the backdrop of an R1 research institution … those types of projects just wouldn't happen at other places,” says Covey Spanier. “The University of Minnesota family, our incredibly diverse, dynamic, forward-thinking institution, affords us the ability to think really big.”
Stay tuned: Public workshops are coming soon
WAM plans to offer free artist workshops open to the public this summer for the first time outside of a classroom. Stay tuned at wam.umn.edu. See tours and group visits for more info.
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Related Links
Weisman Art Museum | Storytelling in Medicine Program | Medical School
