The Art of Slowing Down  🔗 **Source:** [The Art of Slowing Down](https://share.snipd.com/episode/31face44-1b38-4e7a-81da-36f4727c3d65) ## Highlights - **When Art Produces A Physical Reaction** - Colin M. Robertson’s first transformative museum experience came from an installation about people who disappeared during Colombia’s civil war. - The work produced a physical response so intense that he felt almost sick, revealing art’s power beyond intellectual interpretation. Transcript: Colin M. Robertson I did not grow up going to so many art museums. I grew up in a rural part of northern Minnesota on a sheep farm. But when I was 25 or 26, maybe, I went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and I saw an installation that was commemorating the disappeared of the Colombian Civil War of the late 1970s and 80s. And it created this haptic response in my body. It made me physically almost sick to my stomach in a way that I was intellectually fascinated by. I was like, how does an artwork do that to you? ([Time 0:00:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f248bd17-34dc-4150-90f8-72bfbd09af7f)) - **Museums Can Shape Public Well-Being** - Slow looking treats museums as places that support well-being, not merely entertainment. - Colin M. Robertson argues that meaningful art can shape beauty, compassion, empathy, and efforts to improve the world. Transcript: Dr. Dacher Keltner Welcome back to Cities of Awe, our series about how public spaces affect public health. Today we're visiting one of my favorite museums, a museum in Nevada that encourages thousands of people to look at art a little bit more slowly and mindfully. And joining us is a pioneer in this space, Colin M. Robertson. Colin works at the intersection of arts education and the environment at the Nevada Museum of Art. And he's been guiding people in something called slow looking, an approach that's based on the idea that when we really take our time to take in what art presents to us, it can change our Life. Colin, I'm really glad to be talking with you. Thank you so much, Dakar. It's great to be here. A lot of new research is starting to show that art is a pathway to well-being, that when we find meaning in art, it shapes how we feel, influences emotions like beauty and compassion and Empathy. And it shapes how we behave in the world and try to lift up the world towards better ends. ([Time 0:04:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad240453-ce4f-4cb9-863a-c7a21dba9f3b)) - **Replace The 27-Second Museum Glance** - Slow down before moving on, because the average visitor spends only about 27 seconds with an artwork. - Give yourself enough time to engage an artwork emotionally and psychologically rather than treating it as quick entertainment. Transcript: Colin M. Robertson How do you think about a person's experience in front of a piece of art? There's a very famous study, at least maybe it's infamous, that the average museum visitor looks at an artwork for 27 plus or minus seconds before they move on. People don't know, they don't learn how to experience art or just embrace it in an open way. We limit our focus to a kind of entertainment value and not one that is actually about how to engage with our emotional and psychological lives. I really believe fervently that art can really change people and it can mobilize people to embrace their feelings and intuition and community in ways that are oftentimes surprising. Because in our culture, I think oftentimes museums are lumped into entertainment more than they are lumped into well-being or health and wellness. And so we try to bridge that gap a bit by engaging teachers and students in experiences in the museum. We really try to emphasize the slow-looking idea, reminding them that if they're going to actually engage in thinking about and feeling through an artwork, they've got to slow down. ([Time 0:05:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb65e620-c204-4f94-b1e1-a1e65aadd013)) - **Students Explore A Multisensory Rainforest** - Nevada students entered Ernesto Neto’s Children of the Earth installation, touching fabric, smelling spices, and playing seed-and-pod instruments. - The multisensory environment initially felt disarming, but it helped students notice their physical connection to the world. Transcript: Colin M. Robertson The students saw a variety of artworks, but the first component of their visit is into an installation by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto called Children of the Earth. Dr. Dacher Keltner So we're going to start in with our first artwork. Colin M. Robertson It's an installation that is very multi-sensory. You have to imagine a wall of fabric curtains in a kind of hand-sewn pattern of green fabrics. And those fabrics sort of encircles you in this green wall of fabric. And you have to kind of bat your way through the curtains to get to the inside. Dr. Dacher Keltner All right, so I know we talked about keeping our hands off the artwork, but this artwork is very special. We're going to have the opportunity to kind of play with our senses. Colin M. Robertson And you arrive at the inside of a kind of jungle-like environment in the gallery. There are orange futons on the floor and they are kind of nestled in a Tetris-like variety of shapes. And then hanging from the ceiling, which is kind of a crocheted macrame-like ceiling structure, are these kind of pendulum-like crocheted bags in various sizes that are stuffed with Natural materials, like crackling dried leaves and fennel and basil, cloves and turmeric. And it is this very sensory kind of experience. And so we invite students to come in and just sort of interact with the installation, which is by design intended to be touched and intended to be smelled and intended to be experienced In a multisensory way. Dr. Dacher Keltner I'd like us to all walk around and get a sniff for each of these pods. Just kind of bring them close to your nose. Each different color pouch is a different scent. So I'll invite you to walk around the space and see what you recognize, see what you smell. Colin M. Robertson We invite the students and their teachers and chaperones just to take it in for a few moments and make observations about what they're experiencing and what they smell, see, feel, and So forth. Start playing any instrument, any one playing. We do a pretty good job of pulling them into that environment and letting them play with these kind of percussive rattles and elements that are made from seeds and pods and nuts that create Sounds as well. Students just take it in sort of on their own for a fairly long period of time. Like they start to wonder like, are we still doing this? It's really quite interesting because our attention span is so short today because all of the scrolling and all of the 24-hour cycles of everything, it is a little bit disarming, I think, To anyone, but especially students, to have the freedom to just sort of say, what does this thing sound like if I bump it up against this other thing? ([Time 0:07:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4342099-88a3-4e54-a198-7a484542488d)) - **Close Observation Transfers Beyond Art** - Close observation counters the distracted habits of digital life and strengthens skills useful in science, technology, and other fields. - Discussing only four or five artworks per hour lets students uncover deeper layers instead of collecting superficial impressions. Transcript: Colin M. Robertson And then we unpack that in a conversation about what those students are experiencing and what they're observing and what they're feeling in response to those materials. Because the real idea behind Ernesto Neto's work is to remind us that we are multisensory animals, that we are people who have a physical relationship with an environment. Dr. Dacher Keltner This artwork is meant to resemble the Amazon rainforest. What do you think the artist wants us to take away from experiencing the rainforest this way? Colin M. Robertson Connectedness, the way everything is connected. You get to feel it instead of just looking at the future. It's like you get to feel comfortable and it smells natural. Anjan Chatterjee It smells like a little more natural than artificial smells. Yeah. Colin M. Robertson They're open-ended questions about what do they notice, what do they observe, what are they hearing or smelling in the case of the Neto installation? And that observation capacity is something that just by itself is kind of counter to our digital lives. Close observation is a key skill in art, obviously, but it's also a very key skill in science and technology, engineering, and every other field. But our lives are kind of governed by technologies that wrap that all up in ways that obscure the importance of observation and physical experience. And I think this art installation really rewards that close looking and engagement. We never really look at more than four to five artworks in an hour's time with those students and try to have a more layered conversation with them about what those artworks are actually About. If they're going to actually engage in thinking about and feeling through an artwork, they've got to slow down. And so we take time and unpack and sort of pull the layers off of the onion, as it were, in terms of looking at an artwork and helping people just to look closely. Because I think so many times people have a hard time looking and seeing what might be there. ([Time 0:10:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9a361ada-ef62-4743-915d-6e4eb69d4de7)) - **Art Turns Museums Into Social Catalysts** - Shared art experiences can create conversation and shared reality, countering social isolation and reluctance to acknowledge feelings. - Colin M. Robertson sees museums as social catalysts, especially after isolation intensified during COVID and ongoing turmoil. Transcript: Dr. Dacher Keltner One of the most powerful things that art encourages is a sense of conversation and shared reality and other people's perspectives. And it sounds like you're really kind of bringing it to these kids that you're leading through your tours. What have you learned about the child experience of art and then an adult experience of art? Colin M. Robertson Adults have been habituated to the idea that there are right and wrong answers about a lot of things. And so I think a lot of times adults are reticent, if not reluctant, to speak up about their thought or feeling about something. And I also think that in our culture and society, we are so isolated from one another, and there are so many forces that are creating isolating circumstances, or at least the perception Of separating and isolating forces, that we don't feel connected to one another in ways that are really important to civilization and to society's function. Museums ought to be understood as not merely entertainment value, but as social catalysts, because people, especially adults, need to experience something together in order to Kind of provide an antidote to the isolation another that many people have felt more acutely since COVID and as a result of things going on in the world today. In our culture, I think people are very reluctant to feel anything. We like to just try to ignore or put our feelings under the carpet and sweep them away and not deal with them. But art and sharing experiences with others about it can be a very powerful antidote to that isolationism. If people kind of embrace looking carefully and thinking carefully about what artists do and make and think, you can see that a creative act is a very powerful way to respond ([Time 0:13:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4ea02aee-5d79-4453-a78b-03c0f86f1a91)) - **Practice Presence Outside The Museum** - Practice presence by focusing on where you are and what is happening now, whether viewing art, driving, or speaking with someone. - Notice small details in other people’s actions and feelings to understand what is unfolding around you. Transcript: Dr. Dacher Keltner Kids and adults come into the Nevada Museum of Art. They have free time. You guide them through slow-looking exercises. It has all these benefits we've talked about. But then we go outside and it's pressure in the classroom and it's making ends meet for parents. How do you think we can take the wisdom and lessons of being in slow-looking exercises in a museum and apply them outside life? Just being present. Colin M. Robertson Just being where you are, when you are, and focusing on that thing at that time. How might slowing down and really noticing things be useful outside of the museum, in your everyday life? Ooh, can't hands right on. Dr. Dacher Keltner You could pay small attention to details of people like how they feel or their actions. Anjan Chatterjee Yeah it's like to pay attention to more things that you usually wouldn't like the tiny details like understanding how someone's feeling. The more you pay attention to it the more you understand what's going on right now. Colin M. Robertson I'm always alarmed by the number of kids and adults I see walking around with headphones and pocket computers while they're walking across a street. And I just think that lack of awareness is really troubling. And I guess I feel like that presence and just sort of being attuned to what's happening around you when it's happening and as it's happening is really the key. And that's true in a museum setting as much as it is while you're driving in traffic ([Time 0:15:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d25ee0ad-b222-41b2-b570-e802d7509b7d)) - **The Brain Builds Beauty Through Three Systems** - Anjan Chatterjee’s aesthetic triad combines sensory-motor responses, emotion and valuation, and knowledge or cultural meaning. - Learning vocabulary for aesthetic experiences helps people recognize subtle reactions and use art for self-discovery. Transcript: Dr. Dacher Keltner How do you break down that process? What happens? Anjan Chatterjee We think about it in the context of a framework that we refer to as the aesthetic triad. Sensory and motor organization is one. Our emotions and valuation, that we're always imposing value on what we see. If it's beauty, there's always some pleasure, but, you know, it can be other things. And the way in which semantics and knowledge overlays on that. And so this is where a lot of individual differences comes in, which is, where have you grown up? What's your culture? What's your educational background? Even what point in history you happen to be. Most Americans will say that Impressionists are among their favorite works. 150 years ago, the salons in Paris threw them out, and our brains are not that different than they were 150 years ago. And so whenever we're designing experiments or asking questions, we try to tease those apart with the idea, and I think this is important for the non-scientists listening, that every Experiment is incremental and provisional. There's no such thing as the silver bullet experiment that's going to answer any deep question. So that's one key. And then the other piece I think worth bringing in is we've spent some time developing a taxonomy of aesthetic impacts. And the intuition here is that if you take a complex sensory experience, let's say wine tasting, most people can say, I like it, I don't like it, or it's kind of interesting, and then they Get stuck. And then if you have a sommelier who gives you a set of descriptions that, you know, there's an oaky finish, there's some berries in there, there's a hint of chocolate, you know, most People can then start picking out those elements of their own experience. And, you know, this is, as you know, a truism in psychology. We're much better at recognizing than generating, right? So you can recognize those things in your experience as opposed to generating what that is. And so our intuition that seems to be bearing out is that if given a vocabulary, people can start identifying their experience. And I think it makes the experience richer. ([Time 0:20:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2721b0f-6394-4bd7-8355-fe334888a508)) - **Fifteen Minutes Made Art Feel More Beautiful** - In Anjan Chatterjee’s museum experiment, students spent 15 minutes with artworks by examining form, emotions, and personal associations. - Their liking stayed constant, but perceived beauty, empathy, and compassion increased, including difficult emotions tied to colonial history. Transcript: Dr. Dacher Keltner Tell us what you think slowing it down does to this three-stage process of aesthetic experience, and how did you test it in a museum? Anjan Chatterjee We have people look at specific works of art. In this case, this was the Penn Museum, which is an anthropologic museum. We chose four works of art, and for two of them, people just looked at them the way they normally would. And for two of them, they looked at the works for 15 minutes, which is a long time. And these were Penn students. And if you take young people and tell them, look at one thing for 15 minutes and you can't pull out your phone, this is close to torture for them. However, we are not as cruel as that might appear. We basically used, again, this aesthetic triad where we said, okay, now for five minutes, look at the form, look at the shape, look at the relationship of the component parts, look at The texture, giving them these ways of looking at it. For five minutes, get a sense of what your reaction is to it. What are you feeling? It's not a single emotion, right? What's the whole panoply of what you're experiencing over another five minutes? And then spend five minutes, use the work as a vehicle to wander. What does this make you think of? What other associations do you have? And is any of this relevant to your own personal life? Once you do it that way, it turns out the 15 minutes goes quite quickly. And what we find is that their ratings of liking didn't change, but their ratings of beauty did. That somehow they were experiencing more beauty, which suggests that at least the way people are interpreting that word has a little more depth than just, I like it. And then we found that people experienced more empathy, more compassion. You know, and in this case, even some of the negative emotions, because it's an anthropologic museum, these were indigenous works of art and African works of art. So that whole kind of colonial imperial sensibility then starts to get overlaid the more people are thinking about this and experiencing them. So I think this is an important piece, which is that uncomfortable emotions are also important, right? They're important to dwell into in the context of a kind of safe space. ([Time 0:23:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b4f6ece5-a7d5-4cd7-81fc-736c2f9d23ac)) - **Slow Looking Can Restore A Lost Habit** - Slowing down helps people absorb experience, recognize their reactions, and tolerate uncomfortable emotions in a safe setting. - Repeated practice could restore presence in everyday moments, including time in nature or dinner with a phone-free friend. Transcript: Anjan Chatterjee You can have the time to feel it and experience it and not set it aside because of the next thing you have to do and you've got to be functional and all that. So the big picture, I think, is doing this allows people to be present, to really absorb what they're experiencing, to recognize their own reactions to it. And what we hope is that this becomes potentially a model that most of us in urban America live these hypermanic lives, right? It's very hard to be present when you're in one place, you're thinking what you had to do before, what you have to do next. But just shutting all of that down for a period and just being present, and at least my fantasy is this has the possibility of developing a habit which we have lost and which we can do when You're in nature. You can do when you're sitting across from a friend at dinner that both of you aren't pulling out your phones and doing whatever you need to do. ([Time 0:25:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4519fd25-8c69-40ce-81d0-50c587e0d0f3))