Students Should Study the Arts. . . Because the Arts Deserve to Be Studied

"Would you like to take part in an art therapy session?"  

 The young volunteer set a large box of chalk and paper down on the table in the library of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I had already been camped there for six months with my child who was critically ill from leukemia. I was beaten down, cried all the time, wished I could put my hands on his body and just suck the cancer out of his pores . . . but it doesn’t work that way. I’m a doctor and I had no control over if my own son was going to live or die . . . so I figured, fuck it . . . I might as well copy a picture of a rowboat out of chalk.

 I’ve never been artistic, even though people tell me writing is kind of an art. But when I think of art, I always picture musicians and painters and poets and sculptures. I did once make a turkey out of my handprint in third grade and, like every fifth-grade boy I could mold a killer penis out of clay when the teacher wasn’t looking.

 “No ma’am, I’m making a civil war cannon, I just need to flatten out these balls into wheels.”

 The point being though is I never really appreciated art for art’s sake. It was just something that was around me, that people with purple hair and nose rings enjoyed alongside men in tweed and women adorned in jade and oversized bobbles. It was their world, not mine. Even when I visited Florence and strolled the Uffizi and gazed upon David, I found myself wondering more about how they moved a huge block of marble than the time and vision that went into the piece or how they made paint and canvases, not so much the splendor of the subject matter or the motivation of the painter.

 Yet here I was . . . chalking away, and with each stroke I kind of felt like I was diving deeper into something. I still haven’t figured it out but five years later I can’t look at that boat without crying. Art though, as I am learning, has infinite depth. It brings out the emotions and the soul, and the nuances of the being that hides in each of us. I guess it kind of reflects our thoughts and feelings and dreams and nightmares when our words just won’t do.

The public high school I graduated from has a choir group called the North Central Counterpoints. If you have never seen them, you need to check them out. I might be biased having graduated there, but I am telling you, this is the best high school performing arts group in America. The fact that high schoolers have that much creativity, talent, and vision is so refreshing these days. I am also fascinated by the quality of individuals they produce. I have yet to meet a member of that group of performing artists that is not an absolute gentleman or lady. Each is clearly motivated to go onto better things, to do something greater with their lives. But not only that, the entire arts program within North Central High School from stagecraft to computer design, from sculpting to painting to photography and drama is extraordinary. It is one of the things that makes that school special.  

I reached out to their director of choirs, Michael Berg Raunick, to ask him why we should continue to support and expand the arts in our public schools . . . something I admit in years past I could have cared less about.

 “In my opinion, students should study the arts because the arts deserve to be studied!” he tells me. “Being artists is central to our humanity. People who are creative are the ones who fill our museums, perform in concert halls and movies, and create the soundtracks to our lives. Can we imagine a world where we don’t have Beethoven or da Vinci or, God forbid, Beyoncé—and not to mention the fact that the people who have learned to be creative are also the ones who plan our cities, design buildings, invent new processes to streamline healthcare, and more? If we never learn to be creative, we never move beyond what we already know. That forward motion is why the arts are essential and why it is so important to make sure that every student has the opportunity to make creativity and artistic engagement an essential part of their education.”

Yes . . . those are the words of a high school musical arts teacher in a public high school in Indianapolis. Kind of makes you wish you could go back in time and take his class, doesn’t it?

 Art has also found a special place in our hospital. 

Currently there are forty-two mosaics that adorn the walls throughout our hospital. Celebrated artists Joani Rothenberg and Yael Buxbaum have expanded the Cancer Art therapy in our hospital to allow patients, families, and health care providers, who work within our healthcare system, to take part in creating these incredible, deep, rich, and complex works of art. 

 “Sadly, many of the hands that took part in creating these pieces are no longer with us, but they remain in the mosaics they helped to create,” Joani tells me. Something for all time, I imagine.

 “It’s funny,” I told her, “but I have always thought the environment of the ER as a mosaic of the human experience, each small piece of glass and tile perhaps representing the uniqueness of the human condition.” 

Going back to Michael’s words, “Being an artist is central to our humanity.”

 A while back, our group,St. Vincent Emergency Physicians Inc., decided to fund one such mosaic project for our own ER waiting room. It’s interesting, but when the vote came up in our group on whether or not to fund this sizable expenditure, not a single partner batted an eye. They saw the value of art, the need for an expression outside of the norms, a way for our doctors and nurses and patients to say something without really speaking. Each tile meticulously placed by more than forty members of our ER staff and Cancer Art volunteers over a seven-month period. Each wanting their voices heard in some other medium. Perhaps wanting to find something deeper in themselves or to just be remembered, like a towering marble sculpture of the boy king.

“Reflections” now hangs in our ER, bringing beauty, form, and tranquility to one of the most volatile environments in the city.

 A beautiful representation of the human experience. Something perhaps that simple words can’t express, something we must continue to fund for generations to come. We need to continue to support the arts, to allow it to be a launching point of creativity that will translate itself in future generations, not only in the arts themselves but into medicine and law and urban planning and conservation and thousands of other areas in need of a creative mind.

 We may also come to learn that a chalk drawing of an empty boat, floating still on a pond . . . sometimes is something more.

Dr. Louis M. Profeta is an emergency physician practicing in Indianapolis and a member of the Indianapolis Forensic Services Board. He is a national award-winning writer, public speaker and one of LinkedIn's Top Voices and the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Patient in Room Nine Says He's God. Feedback at [email protected] is welcomed. For other publications and for speaking dates, go to louisprofeta.com. For college speaking inquiries, contact [email protected].