The Lifelong Benefits of Art Education.
© 2024 Peter Barr, PhD.
For the Thorne Sagendorph Art Gallery at Keene State College.
Is art education important?
Naturally, those of us who work in the arts have long believed that the answer is yes. But now we can also point to the mounting evidence from a variety of academic disciplines—ranging from educational psychology to epidemiology—that show how studying, making, and thinking about art imparts lifelong benefits. Educational psychologists have recently documented many ways that making art develops so-called habits of mind as well as executive functioning skills that are essential for all students’ success in school and life—regardless of what they end up doing with their careers. Furthermore, for those of us who work in the arts, art education is obviously extremely important to our training and careers, and a recent survey of arts graduates indicates that professional artists and designers are pleased with their preparation and happy with their career choices—in fact far happier than workers in most other fields. Finally, for anyone who ends up working in non-art areas, new mind-body studies demonstrate that creating art and visiting art exhibits reduces stress and builds happiness, resilience, and creative capacity. Especially notable are recent longevity studies that have shown that older adults who frequently visit art exhibitions enjoy longer lifespans and lowered incidents of dementia.
Art education is important to students early in their lives because it develops critical habits of mind. Habits of mind are a set of thinking dispositions that successful people employ when confronted with novel problems—and recent scholarship points to the art studio as an important place where students put these habits of mind into practice. For example, educational psychologist Kimberly M. Sheridan and her colleagues have spent countless hours watching students as they work in various art studios and developed a list of the dispositions and skills that students consistently demonstrate there. Among them, in no particular order, are art students’ ability to:
- Observe (really seeing, not just looking)
- Envision (thinking in images)
- Reflect (questioning, explaining, and evaluating)
- Express (finding meaning)
- Stretch & explore (taking a leap)
- Engage & persist (committing and following through)
- Develop craft (technique), and
- Understand art worlds (investigating domains and communities). i
They point out that students working in an art studio are regularly invited to see the world more clearly, to think in images, to find meaning in what they create, and to evaluate their own work. Plus, as teachers, we often encourage our students to explore prior generations of artists, to discover unfamiliar territory, and to see their projects through to completion. Sheridan and her colleagues emphasize that these habits of mind are “the real benefits of visual arts education” because they represent the core cognitive and behavioral strategies that productive people turn to when asked to overcome obstacles, think flexibly, and take responsible risks. Significantly, the researchers emphasize that these dispositions “are important not only for the visual arts but for all the arts disciplines,” including theater, dance, and music, as well as “the serious study of… science, mathematics, history, literature, and writing.”ii
For elementary-age students, Professor of Psychology Per Normann Andersen at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences has found that young students who receive arts enrichments demonstrate dramatically improved executive function, which is a term psychologists use to describe a range of behaviors essential to success in school and in life. These behaviors include improved impulse inhibition, working memory needed to stay on task, and mental flexibility. Such capacities are obviously important to anyone hoping to function effectively in the 21st century—with its countless distractions and ceaseless change. For his randomized controlled trial—the gold standard of experimental research—Andersen followed three Norwegian classrooms with a total of 109 six- to nine-year olds. One classroom received one hour of arts enrichment three days each week for twelve weeks, with two weeks of instruction in the areas of music, theatre/drama, dance, literature/poetry, visual arts, and photography/digital art. The other two classrooms worked with their traditional curricula and received no arts enrichment. After Andersen analyzed his data, he concluded that “the intervention group displayed a greater improvement in behavioral regulation with four times as large effect sizes compared to the control group.”iii
Even when students are allowed to produce art without prescribed assignments, they develop confidence and courage in their ability to explore, discover, and work through uncertainty. For example, in many art classrooms students are given basic materials and asked to create. Then, when they presents their work to the teacher, they can discuss what they have learned and what they plan to do next. As Lorne Buckman explains in his 2021 book, Make to Know, “when we make without preconceived notions, each thing we create yields new questions. Then the questions and the conversations can happen born of that applied making.”iv In this way, the studio instructor who emphasizes applied making provides a crucial space for student-centered problem solving through an iterative process of open-ended artmaking followed by observation, discussion, reflection, investigation, and increasingly purposeful creation.
Of course, art education is critically important for those who work in the arts—and the majority who do so report being happy with their careers and with their academic training. In 2010, the Center for Postsecondary Research surveyed 13,581 alumni from 154 arts institutions and found that the vast majority of arts alumni had landed jobs in their chosen fields and reported significant levels of job satisfaction. 92 percent of those surveyed found work after graduation, and 66 percent report that their first job out of college was a close match for what they wanted to do. In addition, an astounding 70 percent of respondents report that they are “very satisfied” with their careers. This is despite the—sometimes—low levels of pay in the arts and our culture’s noxious narratives that demean arts education as either a waste of time or a path to unemployment and unhappiness. The study’s authors summarize their findings this way: “In general, arts graduates are happy with their training and have few regrets.”v
The extraordinarily high levels of job satisfaction that arts workers enjoy contrasts dramatically with the discouragingly low levels of satisfaction in most other areas of employment. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 60 percent of global workers are emotionally detached at work, with nineteen percent being miserable. Only 33% of all workers feel engaged in their occupations. In the U.S. specifically, Gallup found that 50% of workers describe themselves as feeling stressed in their jobs on a daily basis; 41 percent are worried, 22 percent are sad, and eighteen percent are angry. Plus, these high levels of stress and low levels of satisfaction are clearly not just a matter of work-life imbalance since the survey’s respondents describe themselves as being unhappy whether working at home, at the office, or working 30-hour or 60-hour weeks.vi
Fortunately, for anyone who has chosen a career outside the arts, recent scholarship points to artmaking as a viable path to contentment in life and success at work. For example, in 2014, Neuroscientist Anne Bolwerk found that artmaking improves interaction within the artist’s default mode network, which is a region of the brain closely associated with creative thinking and mental fortitude.vii And, on a neurochemical level, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross have also noted in their bestselling book, Your Brain on Art, that artmaking releases serotonin and endorphins,viii which are hormones that reduce pain and stress and produce “a more generous, open frame of mind and resilience.”ix
Magsamen and Ross then offer a useful example illustrating the connection between artmaking and resilience by sharing firefighter Aaron Miller’s story about the emotional advantage he has derived from making highly detailed drawings of vintage trucks. In college, Miller had studied graphic design but stopped making art when he thought it wasn’t important to his career. He soon discovered, however, that the pressure of remaining constantly vigilant for his job left him feeling stressed and overwhelmed. So, he returned to artmaking in his free time and discovered that when he focused on drawing, he was able to turn off the watchful part of his brain needed to be successful as a firefighter. He stated, “And while I’m ‘off,’ I can have better conversations about my emotions or anything really. I’m an easier person to talk to.”x
Bolwerk, Magsamen and Ross’s discoveries linking artmaking to creative thinking and emotional stability align with the work of Professor of Social Psychology Barbara Fredrickson, who has observed that when we experience positive emotions like calm, happiness and pride we become more open and creative because positive emotions naturally broaden our thinking and build our resources and connections. She calls this beneficial link between happiness and innovation her “broaden-and-build theory.”xi This is a useful concept that helps to explain perhaps why researchers at Michigan State University discovered that winners of the Nobel Prize are nearly three times more likely than the average scientist to have an artistic or craft hobby.xii
Moreover, for those who would rather think about art rather than make it, researchers in England have pointed to a correlation between visiting art museums and improved public health outcomes. In 2006, psychophysiologist Angela Clow from the University of Westminster found that the stress hormone cortisol rapidly drops in London office workers when they spend their lunch breaks visiting an art gallery. Clow and her colleagues asked 28 volunteers to provide them with saliva samples before and after exploring the art. What they discovered is that their subjects’ cortisol levels fell during their visit at a rate five times faster than one would normally expect.xiii Of course, high levels of cortisol are not necessarily harmful since we need cortisol to rise when our jobs require peak performance or when we need to respond quickly to a dangerous situation. But when cortisol levels remain stubbornly high for too long—for example, when our home lives are as stressful as our work lives—we can develop a variety of poor health outcomes, including high blood pressure, premature aging, and clinical depression.xiv
The decreased levels of cortisol that Clow observed in people who visit art galleries might help explain why older adults enjoy longer lifespans and reduced levels of dementia when they frequently engage in the arts. For more than a decade, scientists have known that the quality and quantity of an individual’s social relationships are closely linked to improved mental health and reduced incidence of sickness and death—on par with quitting smoking.xv More recently, in 2021, epidemiology researcher Daisy Francourt and her associates from University College London have shown that arts engagement also yields similar benefits.xvi In a longitudinal survey involving 6,000 older adults spanning a period of fourteen years, they measured how often the subjects of their study attended events at art museums, art galleries, exhibitions, the theatre, concerts, or the opera. At the end of their study, they matched this data against the participants’ longevity. What they discovered is that the more frequently individuals engaged in these arts events, the longer they live. For example, for the 27 percent of their sample who attended arts events occasionally, one or two times a year, there was a fourteen percent reduced risk of dying early compared to those who did not attend these events at all. And, astoundingly, for the nineteen percent of their sample group who attended art events frequently, at least every other month, there was a 31 percent lower risk of dying early. These correlations turned out to be quite robust and held true even when the researchers corrected for demographic, socioeconomic, health-related, behavioral, and social factors.
In a related study of 3,911 adults aged 50 and older, Francourt also found a lower incidence of dementia among people who visited art museums, art galleries, and exhibitions every few months or more—a correlation that also held true when she controlled for health-related variables and community engagement. Indeed, she attributed this remarkable effect to “the combined neural and sensory stimulation and cognitive engagement provided by museums” and concluded that physicians and community health professionals should consider prescribing visits to art exhibits as “a potential cultural intervention for increasing or maintaining cognitive reserve.”xvii
Is art education important? Recent scholarship in a variety of fields points to the extraordinary, lifelong benefits that we can enjoy when we study, make, and think about art—from elementary school through old age. Art education turns out to be critically important to developing core habits of mind and executive function skills of our students, including the next generation of arts professionals. Moreover, by encouraging our students to remain engaged in the arts for their entire lives, either by making or thinking about art, we can help them become more creative problem solvers, more resilient, happier workers, and healthier adults.
Indeed, art education is important.
1 In their book, Studio Thinking 3: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education (Third Edition; New York: Teachers College Press, 2022), p. 4, Kimberly M. Sheridan, et al. provide this list in no particular order.
2 As I reflect on my own teaching practice, I recognize that many of these “habits of mind” show up in my course outcomes, which I list as:
• Explore tools, materials, and techniques.
• Develop creative strategies and meaningful ideas.
• Work iteratively to solve problems.
• Investigate historical artworks.
• Describe and analyze works of art.
• Demonstrate persistence, and
• Engage in sustainable and ethical practices.
3 Per Normann Andersen et al., “Art of Learning—an Art-Based Intervention Aimed at Improving Children’s Functions,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (July 2019). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01769.
4 Lorne Buckman, Make to Know: From Spaces of Uncertainty to Creative Discovery (Thames & Hudson, 2021) as quoted in Sheridan, et al., op. cit., 158-159.
5 Center for Postsecondary Research, “Forks in the Road: The Many Paths of Arts Alumni,” 2010. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED521744.pdf.
6 Gallup, “State of the Global Workplace: 2023 Report,“ https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx. See also: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/12/job-unhappiness-is-at-a-staggering-all-time-high-according-to-gallup.html.
7 Anne Bolwerk et al., “How Art Changes Your Brain: Differential Effects of Visual Art Production and Cognitive Art Evaluation on Functional Brain Connectivity,” PLOS One 9 (July 2014), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0101035. For the link between the default mode network of the brain and creative thinking, see: Ben Shofty, et al. “The default network is causally linked to creative thinking,” Molecular Psychiatry 27, 1848–1854 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-021-01403-8
8 Cleveland Clinic, “Endorphins,” https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/23040-endorphins#care.
9 Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, Your Brain on Art (New York: Random House, 2023), 63.
10 Ibid.
11 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. Sep 29,2004; 359 (1449): 1367–1378. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693418/
12 Robert Root-Bernstein et al., “Arts Foster Scientific Success: Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal Society, and Sigma Xo Members,” Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology, October 2008 1 (2):51-63. DOI:10.1891/1939-7054.1.2.51.
13 Angela Clow, et al. “Normalisation of salivary cortisol levels and self-report stress by a brief lunchtime visit to an art gallery by London City workers,” Journal of Holistic Healthcare, 3 (2). pp. 29-32, 2006.
14 Mayo Clinic, “Stress Management,” https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037
15 Julianne Holt-Lunstad et al., “Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review.” PLOS Medicine, July 27, 2010
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316.
16 Daisy Francourt et al., “How Leisure Activities Affect Health: A Narrative Review and Multi-Level Theoretical Framework of Mechanisms of Action,” Lancet Psychiatry 8, no. 4 (April 2021): 329-39, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(20)30384-9
17 Daisy Francourt et al., “Cultural Engagement and Cognitive Reserve: Museum Attendance and Dementia Incidence over a 10-year Period,” The British Journal of Psychiatry 213, no. 5 (July 2018): 661-63, https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2018.129.