Palmeri and Gauthier are collaborating with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, on a two-year project that recently earned a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Research: Art Works program award. The project is a scientific study testing whether visual art training can enhance visual perception and visual cognition skills. The Albright-Knox’s Innovation Lab has played a key role in bringing together leading experts in visual arts education, visual perception and visual cognition, and vision, and other collaborators include the Ontario College of Art and Design University and the State University of New York at Buffalo. The team of interdisciplinary partners seeks to combine an art-historical approach to understanding images with a scientific understanding of high-level vision. An arts training program, developed in consultation with OCAD U, will draw from existing museum programs and workshops, as well as basic principles taught in introductory visual studies and visual arts courses, in a series of lessons featuring artworks from the collection of the Albright-Knox. In collaboration with the museum, Vanderbilt will test the impact of the training program on visual perception and visual cognition. The team hopes to use the results of these tests to help shape a curriculum for enhancing high-level visual skills for people from all walks of life, establishing an even more vital role for the visual arts and arts organizations.
Vanderbilt neuroscientists, art museum collaborate on NEA-funded visual cognition research