{"id":72874,"date":"2019-06-19T09:11:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=72874"},"modified":"2019-06-19T09:11:19","modified_gmt":"2019-06-19T13:11:19","slug":"making-the-rounds-among-the-old-masters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2019\/06\/19\/making-the-rounds-among-the-old-masters\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Rounds Among the Old Masters"},"content":{"rendered":"

BUSM students visit Boston\u2019s MFA to deepen their powers of observation<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lynne Allen, a CFA School of Visual Arts professor, discusses Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s 1888 portrait of Postman Joseph Roulin with a group of MED students at the Museum of Fine Arts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On a recent spring morning at the Museum of Fine Arts, two dozen School of Medicine students stare up at Joseph Mallord William Turner\u2019s circa-1805 oil painting Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen<\/i>. The mammoth canvas, nearly 5 feet high and 8 feet wide, depicts a surging Alpine waterfall that dwarfs the human figures at the bottom of the frame.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no wrong answers, no grades, this is purely an opportunity to practice observation,\u201d says Lynne Allen, a College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts professor, and one of three faculty facilitators accompanying the students on this visit. \u201cEverything we do in medicine and in art begins with observation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third-year students, in the middle of their psychiatric rotation, are asked to look deeply and react to whatever strikes them as significant, from the story an artwork tells, to its composition, to the artist\u2019s use of colors and brushstrokes. Whether on rounds in a ward or one-on-one with a patient in a treatment room, doctors need to be able to see both the obvious and the subtle. The MED program nudges the students out of their white-coat cloister, sharpening their observational skills by applying them to art.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the upper left corner there\u2019s a rainbow and I thought that was really interesting,\u201d says MED student Mikayla Huestis (CAS\u201916). \u201cAll the water is devastating these poor little people. But then you have this beautiful rainbow\u2014it\u2019s majestic and more uplifting. Even in tragedy there\u2019s a silver lining.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t see the rainbow at all until you brought it up,\u201d says Allen. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s interesting about this process. You\u2019re going to see something I didn\u2019t see, and I\u2019m going to see something you didn\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspired by reading about a similar program at Yale, Andrew Clark, a MED assistant professor of psychiatry, put the program together in the spring of 2018 with Richard Raiselis, a CFA School of Visual Arts associate professor. Eight groups have visited the MFA over the last year: typically, they\u2019ll look at five works of art. Each group focuses on different works in the MFA\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n

The students are asked to say what they see going on in each work and discuss why they have that particular impression or perception. While they may see very different things initially, by the end of the discussion they often reach more of a consensus, and learning how to do that is one of the most important parts of the exercise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they\u2019re doing in front of a painting is similar in important ways to what they\u2019d be doing on a ward,\u201d Clark says, \u201cwhere they\u2019re being asked to observe a patient carefully, to gather observations and data, to communicate that to the treatment team, and then work together with other members of the team to develop a coherent understanding of the individual in front of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The facilitators are there to help focus the conversation but also to provide technical and historical context for the art. The department of psychiatry has supported the program, Clark says, but it\u2019s not really specific to psychiatry. A number of medical schools are doing something similar, including a program underway at BU\u2019s Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine.<\/p>\n

After discussing the Turner painting, students and faculty break into smaller groups to rotate among three other paintings. Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s 1888 portrait of Postman Joseph Roulin <\/i>draws contradictory assessments of his mood based on posture and facial expression, either \u201cconfident\u201d or \u201cnot confident at all\u201d or \u201cnot confident trying to act confident.\u201d Someone comments that the postman\u2019s hands seem deformed, and Allen notes that it could be the postman has arthritis or it could simply be Van Gogh\u2019s approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things here that are not anatomically correct,\u201d cautions Allen. \u201cVan Gogh saw things the way he saw things, and accuracy is not always the first thing he was going for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving on, she says, \u201cI want to ask you as medical doctors to look at his face, look at this cheek, this ruddiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeborrheic dermatitis,\u201d a student says to laughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr he drinks a lot,\u201d says Allen.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Marc Schepens, a CFA School of Visual Arts lecturer, helps a group of MED students understand why Odilon Redon\u2019s 1899 oil The Angel of Destiny makes them uncomfortable.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Odilon Redon\u2019s 1899 oil The Angel of Destiny<\/i> is an outlier artistically, a spooky image of an ambiguous figure with a skiff on an empty shore, which makes some students uncomfortable: He or she? Human or wraith? \u201cThe funny thing about ambiguity is, how you interpret it becomes a reflection of yourselves,\u201d says Marc Schepens (CFA\u201912), an SVA lecturer at CFA and the third faculty facilitator.<\/p>\n

Edgar Degas\u2019s Ballet Dancer with Arms Crossed, <\/i>an oil painting circa 1872, leaves the students debating whether the dancer is winding down from a rehearsal or waiting to go on during a performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s not impressed with whatever she\u2019s looking at,\u201d says MED student Sean Perez.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do you say that?\u201d asks facilitator Susan Warren, a psychiatrist who is an instructor in the department of psychiatry at UMass Medical School and a consultant to the School of Visual Arts.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Susan Warren, a Brookline psychiatrist, talks about the scale and drama of Joseph Mallord William Turner\u2019s painting Fall of the Rhine at Schaffhausen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cShe has, like, a skeptical look,\u201d Perez says. \u201cFrom what you can see of her eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks to me like she\u2019s crying, the way her shoulders are angled downward and in,\u201d someone else says.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s more pensive and focused on the internal, whatever she\u2019s dealing with,\u201d says student Karen Cuttin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proportion of her wrists is off, like she has a Colles Fracture,<\/a>\u201d\u00a0adds Perez, getting another laugh.<\/p>\n

The final work the students examine is Tara Donovan\u2019s 2003 sculpture Untitled<\/i>, a cloud of thousands of Styrofoam cups glued together that hangs from the ceiling in a multistory lobby. It looks like a beehive, someone says. It feels organic, someone else says. Is it a comment on obesity? asks a third.<\/p>\n

The MED students consistently give the MFA field trips high marks. \u201cIt\u2019s such a different experience than just walking through a museum,\u201d Clark says. \u201cIf they can really be present with that piece of art for 10 or 15 minutes, there\u2019s so much they can discern. It\u2019s amazing to me what comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of the students said a morning at the MFA among beautiful art was first and foremost a welcome break from their routine. But others said the exercise would help them going forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn psychiatry everyone has tragic stories and I get very caught up and sad. I\u2019m working on removing myself so I can relate to them without getting caught up,\u201d says Huestis. \u201cLearning to see different perspectives helps you step outside your initial impression and see something in a different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

This BU Today<\/em> story was written by Joel Brown<\/a>.\u00a0 Photos by Cydney Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUSM students visit Boston\u2019s MFA to deepen their powers of observation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[157,91,156],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72874"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72878,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72874\/revisions\/72878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}