Beyond Comfort Zones: An Experiment in Medical and Art Education.

Abstract

Practicing medicine and creating art are both informed by observation and perception, yet how artists and doctors view the world and their place in it might be quite different. By bringing two populations together – RISD students and Warren Alpert Medical School students – into one experimental course, “No Innocent Eye: Knowledge and Interpretation in Art and Medicine,” art and medical students were asked to engage in topics and work with skills and processes that might not be considered typical fare in art and medical school curriculums, but which we hope gave doctors-in-training creative ways of rethinking medical practice and patient care, and presented art students with new conceptual and material tools to push their art-making.