Museums Embrace Art Therapy Techniques for Unsettled Times

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Zachary Small

A 16th-century cloth painting of the Buddha meditating, one of many artworks suitable for self-contemplation at the Rubin Museum of Art. Rubin Museum of Art, Gift of Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation

When the instructor asked him to describe his life in two words, Walter Enriquez chose carefully: fear and violence. He had spent decades as a policeman in Peru during the bloodiest days of armed conflict between government forces and guerrilla fighters that killed nearly 70,000 people. But he said that nothing could have prepared him for the extreme isolation and loneliness that come with quarantine. Having lost a handful of his friends and neighbors to the coronavirus pandemic, the 75-year-old retiree has turned toward art therapy programs offered by the Queens Museum to improve his mental health. [More]