Museums and healing

The other day, I was asked: "What does healing in a museum look like?" 

I had to think. As an outcome, healing is a beautiful, moving goal. But what does it look like? I skip over mental images of people cradling objects and encountering their own heritage in a collection visit. There’s so much that’s been said about the power of objects and I’m a believer in the resonance of material culture. Beyond seeing and occasionally touching objects, I want to picture and describe what we experience as full sensorial beings.

I tried to imagine a space in which people are being healed. It sounds ridiculous. “People being healed,” what does that mean? What do you see? 

My mind conjured a Pentecostal church service, speaking in tongues, eyes closed, faces to the heavens, hands on the devout until they fell to the ground. It’s certainly an overt scene of transformation, the emotions are high and the energy is palpable. 

Can rapture be part of healing?

I thought of the raves I’d been to in my youth, that exuberance felt cathartic, with a post-party glow. Was that healing? Certainly I felt renewed the next morning (alongside feeling super, super tired). It required so much energy expenditure, is that a requirement of healing? Energy in, energy out?

What about calming forms of healing? 

I pictured a yogi at the front of a gallery, a sound bath ringing in my ears, the smell of incense and warm bodies. The group breathes together, the energy is like a sweet fog filling the room, wrapping each individual in permissions; to be present, to be you, to be. Cells can turnover in this fog, skin can mend itself, hearts can rest and relax. Simply because we heal in our sleep and this is about as close to sleep one can get while being awake. 

Can stillness alone lead to healing?

I thought about trauma-informed design in health contexts, like Whitman-Walker Health here in D.C. At this clinic focused on the LGBTQIA+ community, the exits are always visible, a visitor always has a sightline to who is moving around the space so that no one can surprise them, coffee and a couch is always available. The waiting room is a community space as much as a waiting room. I find myself thinking of these wildly divergent environments and the behavior of people within. But I wasn't sure whether these quasi-real imaginings could be on-site in a museum or whether any of these spaces and behaviors offer much to museums. A museum that offers or fosters healing wouldn’t be directly like any of these spaces and how we behave in them—a rave, a religious service, or a meditation center.

How do these elements contribute to healing; environment, belonging, and/or ritual?

To understand what healing looks like, could we look for evidence of an emotional experience? Visible emotions—like nervousness, laughter, crying. This brings me back to catharsis, a welling up of emotions that are connected to trauma, yet bubble up in a positive manner, like someone has hit a vein of pressure in the earth and when the mineral water spouts, people catch the flow in buckets. Holding the water, holding the emotions with you. Is this just therapy? Where else does this spouting of emotions happen except in a very, very, safe and intimate space? Within group and individual therapy, with family or with deep friendships.

Maybe it's human contact, holding each other, being physically close in a way that connects us to our bodies and allows the body to speak. Can touch itself be part of healing? Or being seen with direct eye contact and patient pauses. Proximity to others has power too, we expect to maintain social distances and when those implicit rules are overlooked as a form of support, we can be deeply moved on a physical level. Words reiterate what we already feel in our gut. I matter, I am being supported through the spatial tension between us. 

Of course, this requires actual people, more people working a museum than we usually encounter in a museum visit. NMAAHC has security guards who interact with visitors, offering suggestions, answering questions and giving advice more frequently than other Smithsonian museums I’ve visited. I heard a few years ago that their training involves trauma response. NMAAHC knows their audience has lived experience with oppression and events covered in the museum. They make an effort to be available as humans, individuals walking the floor, hopefully interacting with someone before they reach a triggered emotional state. 

I’m glad I wasn’t asked “How do we bring healing into museums?” Jumping to “how” would have been impossible, since I can’t even define my terms or describe what healing looks like. How do therapists know that healing is happening for someone? Is it only possible to know through the individual's self-reflection? Is self-awareness the key that unlocks the possibility of healing at all? Can you be in the midst of healing and be unaware of it? Or is the question: of course you are unaware of the healing, but are you aware of the effects? So many questions about “how.”

When I reflect on the original question—What does healing in a museum look like?—I share some first thoughts and confess that I just didn't know, though I’m driven to find out. 

Now I'm wondering, what is healing in museums? What does healing look and feel like? Who is doing it and how do they know? How do we sense healing? Is healing finite or infinite? Is it ongoing or does it have an end-state? I wonder if healing is evident only through multiple perspectives. Perhaps healing is evident with attention towards the multiple dimensions of a museum experience, not just what is apparent on the surface or what deep thoughts might come from contemplation or the emotions that come out of a sustained, open conversation with a group. The whole museum experience works together from entry to the bathrooms, from the lactation room to the cafe, from galleries to the children’s activity space. Each staff person brings an eye towards the surprise guest that needs a hug or a smile or a hand—and that contributes to their deeper healing. Healing might appear to be a scab or a scar, yet it’s also sleep schedules and nutrition and stress and joy. There’s no way it’s all or nothing. It’s happening throughout life, not just in a museum visit. It’s a string that ties life experiences together. 

I explored this idea of fitting museums into a larger healing journey through a design fiction project. A found wallet that introduces a person from the future. He struggles with anxiety, he is seeking out help and support through services, insurance offerings and through the Blanton Museum of Art. He meets with a therapist who works at Blanton. He’s purchased a EEG headset that’s got a therapeutic application. This is one vision of future museums as healing spaces. I’ll leave you with this: our spaces and our roles at a museum are just one small piece of someone’s healing journey. Where do we fit in? I’m going to research what that larger journey looks like and share with you what I find.