IUB researcher pushing the potential of museumship

Silverman

A trip to the museum treats visitors to a wide range of experiences--it's a chance to learn, relax, reflect and foster a sense of connection to community and culture.

And with a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, IUB Professor Lois Silverman, recreation and park administration, is exploring the therapeutic potential of museum experiences.

Working collaboratively with the Center for Behavioral Health and the Public Health Nursing Association, Silverman and a team of IU graduate students are exploring how museums and social service agencies can collaborate on therapeutic programs for individuals whose daily life struggles sometimes impede such excursions. The populations involved with this project include older adults with behavioral health problems, the seriously mentally ill and individuals living with HIV/AIDS.

"Research has shown that when you go to a museum, you can have responses that seem like the beginning of something therapeutic -- a change of mood, spiritual uplifting, reminiscences of the past," said Silverman. "It's a natural next step to ask how these responses can be used in therapy."

In addition to the IUB Department of Recreation and Park Administration personnel, the Hilltop Garden and Nature Center, the William Hammond Mathers Museum and Wylie House will be involved in the project.

The ways visitors relate to museum exhibits has been one of Silverman's primary areas of research. Allowing viewers the opportunity to share their own thoughts, views and remarks is becoming a way museum staff are forging partnerships between institutions and their audiences.

A good example, said Silverman, is the Chinatown History Museum in New York City, in which residents are involved in the content and direction of the exhibits. Children's museums and science museums have been forerunners in providing interactive experiences. The stereotypical, cold, silent repositories of the past are fast giving way to better things.

• At the Mathers Museum and the Center for Behavioral Health's Elderhouse, staff have been focusing on the therapeutic value of reminiscence, using a collection of photographs of Bloomington during the 1920s and 1930s. A goal of this project is developing a traveling exhibition to be taken to local schools.

• At the Hilltop Garden and Nature Center, university students and local schoolchildren are focusing on horticulture therapy. Also involved in this segment of the project are clients from Horizons, a partial hospitalization program for adults needing vocation, residential and social support.

• And at Wylie House (see story, next page), individuals living with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers will be taking tours of the historic university home as a leisure learning activity and an opportunity for open dialogue.