Upstairs at the Phoenix Art Museum hangs Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Pink Abstraction,” a swirl of sunset pink streaked with seafoam green. For the group gathered around it, the painting sparks a series of questions. What does it remind you of? the docent asks. “Rainbow sherbet in Chicago,” a woman replies. How does it make you feel? “Calm and comfortable,” another answers. What if it were red instead? “It would be too bold and masculine,” a man in a wheelchair says.
The group imagines, interacts, remembers. And that’s remarkable, because this is a session for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, and their caregivers.
The Arts Engagement Programs at the museum and Phoenix Symphony tap the arts’ ability to color in the shadows of forgetfulness and strike chords in the mind. “These are people who’ve lived full lives, and [the program is] using the artwork to stimulate their stories and trigger memories,” says Christian Adame, the museum’s assistant education director. “You can see that they feel what it was like to be in a place they recognize in a scene.”
At the museum, about 36 participants attend eight sessions of tours and hands-on activities, every other Thursday in fall and spring. Susan Thompson-McHugh says the program has significantly helped her father, Gordon Thompson. “He’s socially engaged, he’s enthusiastic,” she says, sitting near a painting they created together. “Sometimes when we’re driving home, a whole series of thoughts will come back to him.”
The benefit may be even greater for caregivers like Susan, who socialize in the cafe beforehand and learn how to use paintings as a portal to communication, Adame says. “The potential for personal connection in these programs is enormous.”
The same can be said for the Phoenix Symphony’s B-Sharp Music Wellness, a W.O.N.D.E.R. Project for Alzheimer’s. At the start of the spring season, the 40-some patients and caregivers were shy, says Valerie Bontrager, director of education and community engagement. A few concerts later, they’re lining up early, rushing into the hall to chat with friends and hear a talk from charismatic timpanist Bruce Pulk, then sitting together at the Coffee Classics concerts and going for lunch with Pulk. “There are no more strangers,” Bontrager says. “Those little things make me very excited because they’re the movements that show us there’s something really successful happening.”
The B-Sharp program harmonizes two of the most powerful brain boosters: friends and music. Scientific studies show social connections help stave off cognitive decline. And in many dementia sufferers, the brain pathways that process music remain undamaged and can act as bridges to alcoves of autobiography.
Phoenix Symphony also partnered with ASU’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Salivary Bioscience Research to explore music’s effect on stress in dementia patients. Last year, orchestral ensembles visited Huger Mercy Living Center to play a series of intimate concerts. The musicians even danced with patients and seasoned their repertoire with polka to indulge an oompah-loving resident.
And then everybody spit into a vial.
On both concert days and non-concert days, researchers collected saliva samples from patients, caregivers, staff and musicians to measure stress markers such as cortisol. Because it was a pilot study, the results aren’t published or definitive. But preliminary evidence showed music had a lasting effect on lowering stress in patients and caregivers. This fall, the researchers will replicate the study with the aim of publishing.
The B-Sharp program also brings monthly music to Valley hospitals and annual concerts to homeless centers. Orchestra members might begin with Mozart and Beethoven, then rev it up with Rihanna and Jimi Hendrix. When the music plays, it’s as if tendrils of connection form between people, just as they form within the brain. For individuals isolated by Alzheimer’s or homelessness, that can be transformative.
“It’s community building,” Bontrager says. “It may be a 40-minute concert, but within that 40 minutes… you have formed a community that is experiencing this together.”
“The goal of all these programs is building connection,” says education assistant Ben Baer. “Because ultimately what we’re doing is communication. We’re communicating through music.”
