The Therapeutic Potentials of a Museum Visit (original) (raw)

Museotherapy. How Does It Works? Museum as a Place of Therapy, 2020

MUSEOTHERAPY Today, therapy in a museum seems to be an obvious process taking place wherever a museum plays the role not only of a meeting place, a meeting with the past, but above all, a place for the exchange of thoughts and emotions. In the context of constantly changing digital communication technologies universal immersion in VR (virtual reality i.e. potential reality) and the frequently blurred borders between reality and fiction, museums play a new role. They teach us to nurture imagination, to discover and define our identity and to recognize our preferences. During museum encounters with tangible and intangible values, the causes of many of our ailments are revealed. The reasons for the lack of motivation are recognized and treated and they become the therapy treating loneliness. The contemporary museum becomes a self-aware emotiononeum-a space to reflect, to imagine and to feel emotions. This is probably why museums, as the first cultural institutions at the beginning of the 21 st century, have become areas dedicated to our health problems: the loss of sight can be soothed by projection of touch, deafness-by building a story with a "different language", whereas the challenges involved in moving one's own body are replaced by the dynamics of imagination and technology. Museum as an artificial (the word 'artificial' comes from 'art') reality talks about matters that evoke emotions. Emotions, in turn, build motivation and lead them further. However, what we call museotherapy today is not a new phenomenon, it can be derived from the oldest Greek concept of museion / μουσείον and the Latin term musaeum. The museum as a therapeutic space and a form of expression gave life to a new civilization of ideas, half fictional, half real, which over time took the form of theater, literature and, finally, the institution.