In 2013, while a first-year student at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), Dr. Robert Rock found inspiration in the university’s museum collections.
He had participated in a workshop at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), in which medical students were asked to study a pre-selected set of works and provide detailed and accurate descriptions of what they saw — a test of their ability to similarly examine patients.
“I definitely geeked out,” said Rock, who had studied art history as an undergraduate. “I loved taking part in close-looking with my peers.”
The experience led Rock to consider other ways to use art in service of medical education, which eventually led to the creation of “Making the Invisible Visible: Art, Identity, and Hierarchies of Power” (MIV), a program that asks first-year M.D. students at the School of Medicine to observe and interpret artworks at the Yale University Art Gallery and YCBA as a way to discuss bias in healthcare, health inequities, and power dynamics in medicine.
At a recent event at the Gallery marking the program’s 10th anniversary, Rock and other members of the YSM and museum communities reflected on the program’s history and how its mission will be advanced through the new Critical Health Humanities track of YSM’s Medical Humanities Concentration. As part of the evening, attendees had the chance to experience the methodology and impact of “Making the Invisible Visible” through 30-minute interactive tours in the galleries, led by medical-student facilitators.
In a panel discussion with Dr. Anna Reisman, professor and director of the YSM Program for Humanities in Medicine (which includes the Medical Humanities Concentration), and Cyra Levenson, former curator of education and academic outreach at the YCBA, Rock recalled how that initial experience at the YCBA blossomed into a program that continues to help Yale medical students think about how issues of identity and power shape the medical field.
Dr. Anna Reisman (left), Cyra Levenson, and Dr. Robert Rock discuss the origins and importance of the MIV program to medical education at Yale.
One of the goals of the session at the YCBA he’d attended as a fledgling medical student was to teach the aspiring physicians the difference between description and interpretation. That led Rock to consider how students could benefit from exploring the messages behind the visual stories expressed in the artwork, and their implications for medicine and society at large. The idea became a metaphor for what he was experiencing in the rest of his coursework, he said.
“We spent a lot of time examining how the human body works but we weren’t exploring the larger contexts of why people become sick, especially why some groups are more likely than others to do so,” he said.
Rock worked with Levenson to organize a workshop for medical students to examine artworks presented in “Figures of Empire: Slavery and Portraiture in 18th-Century England,” an exhibition that was on view at the YCBA at the time, and to contemplate issues of identity and power in patient-provider interactions.
“What happened during that session was nothing short of magical,” Rock said, adding that viewing the paintings inspired participants to reflect on their experiences as medical students.
Soon after, Reisman incorporated the workshop into YSM’s Program for Humanities in Medicine. The program proved popular with students — many of whom went on to volunteer as the student facilitators who are trained to guide the workshops.
[S]eemingly simple artworks can reveal deeper truths about bias, hierarchy, and the dynamics of medical training, fostering meaningful conversations about these critical issues.”
Kerri Davidson, an M.D. and Ph.D. student at YSM, is a student facilitator who led one of the tours at the anniversary event. The MIV session she attended as a first-year student was the most impactful part of the Introduction to the Profession course required of all new medical students, she said.
“It was a rare opportunity to delve into complex issues in medicine through the lens of 19th-century art,” Davidson said. “The session highlighted how labels like ‘frequent flyer’ or ‘difficult patient’ can dehumanize patients, allowing me to reflect on the intersection of language, power, and perception in healthcare.
“Now as a facilitator for MIV tours, I guide my peers in exploring how seemingly simple artworks can reveal deeper truths about bias, hierarchy, and the dynamics of medical training, fostering meaningful conversations about these critical issues.”
M.D. student Lamley Lawson, a trained facilitator for the MIV program, leading a discussion of Titus Kaphar’s 2016 painting, “Shadows of Liberty.”
Aside from providing tools to help medical students think about issues of power, bias, and inequity in medical care, the program has helped them learn to think deeply about works of art, said Levenson, who now oversees education and public engagement at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
“The fact that the medical community here embraced this opportunity… and has shepherded it forward is so humbling to me and something I’m deeply grateful to have been invited to be a part of,” Levenson said.
Rock, Levenson, Reisman, and Davidson recently published an article in the journal The Lancet describing how the program’s workshops unfold and the key lessons that students draw from them.
The conversations that occur as students gather around paintings during the workshops address “big, messy, difficult concepts that permeate everything we do in medicine whether we realize it or not,” said Reisman.
“In other words, museum-based discussions can be a way to engage in critical thinking,” she said.
While teaching across academic disciplines with original works of art has long been a staple of the Gallery’s and YCBA’s contributions to education at Yale, in recent years a growing number of medical and STEM faculty have expressed interest in art’s broader capacity to support learning, said Liliana Milkova, the Gallery’s Nolen Curator of Education and Academic Affairs, who helped organize the panel discussion.
“First-hand encounters with art in a museum setting offer low-barrier, high-impact opportunities for enhancing skills such as critical observation, evidentiary reasoning, immersive attention, and effective communication — all relevant skills to both trainees and practitioners in the healthcare sector,” said Milkova, who works closely with medical and nursing faculty to bring their students and residents to the museum. “Furthermore, art engagement can cultivate thinking dispositions, ranging from empathy and curiosity to patience and comfort with ambiguity, as well as nourish wellbeing and reduce burnout.”
