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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-12
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqWFRcDtnNc
award winning artists that is if you count kindergarten drawing contests I think we should remember that competition amongst the other five year olds to be pretty intense but I did it I won in fact I still remember the drawings I made this tree and I put a little bird on one of the branches and had musical notes floating in the air perfect nature seemed really groundbreaking
stuff series of everyone of the drawing and but more importantly and this is the more important part of course I still remember the feeling I remember the feeling of getting the Blue Ribbon so I grew up in a small town in western North Dakota and I was born with spina bifida so I was somewhat of an ox had someone about an awkward child that I know
that's hard to imagine in that area a sort of looking young man there but I knew I was good at drawing drawing became therapeutic for me and it also gave me confidence so much so that I decided to dedicate my life to our but seventeen years ago I became a receptionist at an art museum in Fargo and fast forward to today and now the director and
CEO of that berry museum which continues to introduce me to the impact that arts organizations can have on individuals and I think art museums today are primarily known for having things we have challenging modern art we have intricate sculptures we had beautiful paintings of flowers and rare artifacts but what can our museums really do for us and that's a deadlocked like to talk about more today
the late Stephen while for many years the deputy director of the Hirshhorn museum of the Smithsonian once wrote that art museums in the twenty first century we'll go from being about something to being for somebody I think what he predicted was basically our current sentry purpose lies more in what we do then and what we have and I take that a step further I think that
arts organizations and museums are not only for people I think we can actually be human center problem solvers so I like to remove from your minds the art says this very and beautiful decorative flower for the sake of this talk replace it with us one of the heaviest tools in your toolbox now in the U. S. and likely in many places around the world I think
people are more and more existing in binary silence I think people are identifying as black or white urban or rural or liberal or conservative all of this I believe leads to a decrease in empathy and cultural understanding according to a recent study in fact people identify as white have a friendship circle that is over ninety percent white and people who identify as black have a similar
statistic they can be applied to them as well this is the US today as exemplified by Chicago and St Louis with each dot representing a person of a different racial identity according to the narrow and somewhat antiquated categories of the U. S. census but I still think there's some interesting things to glean from these these graphics there are very few integrated neighborhoods in the U. S.
much less integrated cities or towns I'd like to talk about empathy for a minute broadly speaking empathy is the ability to genuinely relate to someone else's thoughts spirits is actions and feelings when you carefully experience a good work of art whether it's a painting or film or theatre or dance you're often asked to make a human connection to the person or the people who created it
to try and understand their inspiration trying to understand their intentions in their actions and their thoughts and feelings by doing this if you're able to make these connections throughout work your practicing empathy so it's no surprise that studies are beginning to %HESITATION find a direct relationship between the two now what happens when there's a decrease in empathy I'm one of the things that happens is an
increase in the objectification of people in Ferguson Missouri for example we now know that police officers have a long history targeting people of color to devastating effect conversely saying please as an oppressive system does not reflect the humanity the officers and stripped them of the dignity of the many that serve their communities with honor this damage relationship does not a Ferguson only problem interestingly enough part
of the solution may actually lying the Peres art museum Miami where program exists called heart detectives which connects middle school students with police officers and our educators and provides them with a meaningful shared experience in the schools and at the museum but why do this through art as one of the program manager says because art is truth seeking prompted by this program one of the participants
who is now in middle school shared a story when she was eight years old which he was riding in the backseat with her mother her mother's writing obviously %HESITATION she was pulled over by the police %HESITATION seemingly routine %HESITATION traffic stop %HESITATION the police then %HESITATION actually pulled a gun on her mother and %HESITATION she felt herself threatened as well %HESITATION this experience made her very
I think reasonably so afraid of police officers and now she's in this program and they're having the shared experience as equals and so she sees the humanity of the officers and vice versa the police officers are having a shared experience with community members that there to protect and to serve I believe that programs like this can be a part of a community police training pretty cool
stuff the ability of art museums to help solve problems does not and that the ones that are human made we can talk about chronic illness today %HESITATION to get art museums like ours here and others around the country are actively developing programs reinforced by science that shows that the environment that a person is in has a positive impact on their ability to cope for their recovery
which makes perfect sense of course but %HESITATION museums have been late to the game in this %HESITATION but there's now emerging programs around the country and one of them is at the Honolulu museum of art where very important PTSD program exists called warrior eyes on art goals of the program are threefold it is to help the whole if it's to use our and positivity to heal
to get the soldiers used to civilian life and it's to give them the tools necessary to cope with the trauma that they've experienced so many so many soldiers experience a dramatic shift throughout this program which I think is is pretty great now and talk about this painting for me I believe this to be a pretty important painting and you might think is an art museum director
it's it's about the product but for me I think this is important because of the creative process so at the beginning of one of the sessions the soldier who made this painting painted a disembodied head and on the bottom he added some fire and on the top of storm clouds basically the essence of turmoil was being described throughout the creative process change throughout the day prompted
by the instructor with a very simple question how can we make this pain more hopeful so we thought about it and he eventually he added the crown and then I'm simple brush strokes added some raised hands essentially going from despair optimism as he created which I think is pretty great now we saw Chicago in Saint Louis here's North Dakota there are dots in there I swear
along with its therapeutic therapeutic abilities art is an effective ten nectar of people connects people to one another and it connects individuals to themselves it is also in a central element to elevating regional economies however are binary existence reveals an arts access gap where people with more resources who often live in cities too often have more access to the arts than people who live in rural
communities in rural parts of the world and underserved neighborhoods I think we can do better I think we can build more inclusive more creative more empathetic more vibrant more entrepreneurial communities that will lead us into the future and I think we can do it through the arts recently thanks to support from members and donors our museums in Fargo Moorhead have taken the bold step to make
our galleries general admission free doing our part as a region in helping close this arts access print gap I can go on from here but you get I think the idea I can leave you with one thing I hope it is this the arts are not a luxury but instead are useful and they exist for everyone they're also exactly what the world needs more of right
