By Dr. Sarah Archino, Furman University 
 
Each year Furman University, located in South Carolina, offers a three-week May term, where students are encouraged to take experiential courses that build on their academic interests and take them in new directions. Inspired by programs bringing medical students into museums, undergraduate students have been coming to New York to focus on the skills of observation and communication since 2017. 

Many of the students are on track for medical careers. This course, “The Art and Science of Observation,” is designed to use art as a “rehearsal space” for interpreting complex, sometimes contradictory visual information; by talking through the processes of looking, students can become better aware of their biases, the ways they reach conclusions, and learn to be more comfortable with differences of opinion.  

One of the challenges is helping students understand the constructed nature of images, especially when they seem “realistic” or “factual.” Our visits with Arlene Shaner in the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine have been instrumental in breaking down the pretense of objectivity, even in medical and scientific illustration.  

Our program is fortunate enough to visit the library three times during the May course. During the first two meetings, students trace a history of illustrated medical and scientific texts, learning under Arlene’s guidance about how print technology, art, circulation, and scientific understanding have unfolded over the centuries. Moving from Vesalius to 20^th-century popular media, our students understand from first-hand experience how information has been created, copied, and circulated, especially in a pre-digital world. 

At our third meeting, students enjoy being able to work directly with books from the collection. They choose a text and then select an image – or a small set of images – to analyze. The students deconstruct the image to consider its materiality, audience, and integration with text. This helps construct a better understanding of how one book can signify a larger system of learning and intellectual history. 

A few examples of student work reveal how they interpret this assignment – from those who transform their notes into a visual scrapbook (material which then found its way into a senior’s ceramics project), to analyses that consider the text’s original function and audience – be it a neurological surgeon of the 16^th century or a family doctor on the 19^th-century American frontier.  

Our visits to the library are always a highlight of our time in New York, in no small part thanks to the wealth of resources, the accessibility of this collection, and the enthusiastic guidance and insight of Arlene Shaner. We look forward to working together in the future!

If you are interested in bringing your own class for research within our collection, please reach out to library@nyam.org.