Art and the Brain: Museum Near Boston Hires Neuroscientist to Transform Visitors' Experience

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The smell of cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns greeted visitors at the entrance to an exhibition last year at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts. Large jars filled with the spices acted as the prologue to “Asia in Amsterdam: The Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age,” conjuring the vibrant city in its 17th-century glory, when the Dutch East India Co. was importing exotic goods from Asia and inspiring artists to make iconic works we now associate with that time and place.

The seasonings not only provided an aromatic introduction but were intended to set the stage and create a multi-sensory experience around the exhibit. Along with tactile stations, spoken narratives and infographics, the piquant component was one of the museum’s early attempts to incorporate ideas from brain science into its work.

Last week, the PEM announced the appointment of Tedi Asher as its full-time neuroscience researcher for the next year, the first-ever such position at an art museum. The news came two months after the PEM announced a grant from the Barr Foundation, a private foundation with a regional focus that seeks to elevate the arts and creative expression. The grant will help the PEM develop its neuroscience initiative.

“I suffer from intense curiosity that takes me over quite a broad spectrum of interests, including a long-standing interest in neuroscience,” says Dan Monroe, the PEM’s executive director and CEO, who has done extensive reading on the brain.

“One day, this very, very simple thought struck me that all art museums create art experiences—that’s what an exhibition is, that’s what programs are—and all of our experiences are created in our brains,” he explains. “Obviously, there’s a world out there, but we’re taking in information from that world, and then it’s interpreted and processed.

“If you’re actually committed to trying to create experiences of art that are as compelling and meaningful and as rich as possible, it would be a good idea to better understand how brains work,” Monroe continues. “It’s such a basic obvious idea, I’m astounded that it never struck me before.”

The thought fits neatly with the PEM’s mission, which Monroe says is “to create experiences of art and culture and creative expression that transform people’s lives by, among other things, helping expand and enrich their perspectives of the world and themselves.”

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