The Eyes Have It

Article in the NIH Record.

“Creating art with older “teammates” made first-year medical students more sensitive to older people, according to results of the Vital Visionaries (VV) collaboration, a pilot program developed by the National Institute on Aging in conjunction with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) in Baltimore. … Launched in March 2004 as a pilot project, the VV program paired 15 first-year medical students from Johns Hopkins with 15 older people from the Baltimore area. The two-person teams met and learned from older visionary artists, took a contour drawing class and worked on various art projects at AVAM in conjunction with its year-long exhibition, ‘Golden Blessings of Old Age/Out of the Mouths of Babes.’”

The AVAM is a fantastic institution with a sky-high inspiration quotient. I strongly recommend that you visit the next time you get to Baltimore.