Rika Burnham thinks the ideal amount of time spent in front of a single work of art is an hour. For her students? An entire semester. That is because Burnham believes art museums are spaces where transformation of eye and mind can occur simply through close, thoughtful looking and shared conversation. As a longtime museum educator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection, and currently a lecturer in Columbia's M.S. in Narrative Medicine (NMED) program, Burnham has dedicated her career to creating experiences and environments that foster meaningful connections with art.
"Art is for everyone,” says Burnham. "And the art museum educator creates the possibility for interaction with works of art for a wide public." That interaction, she believes, carries profound potential.
From the Met to the Frick to Columbia
Burnham's journey to the NMED program began unexpectedly. After years of teaching in the galleries of the Met, she became head of education at the Frick Collection. Within weeks of starting, Dr. Edie Langner, an endocrinologist who had previously brought first-year Columbia medical students to the Frick to study art as part of their training, asked Burnham if she would continue this work. At the time, Burnham was prioritizing public programs—building everything from a public lecture series and after-school program to internships, fellowships, and community partnerships. She said no. And then she said yes.
The medical students' first visit to the Frick was eye-opening for Burnham. "I was instantly persuaded by the intensity of their experience," Burnham recalls. "Theirs was a fiery engagement with the art. They were sizzling—observant, curious, challenging, active, thoughtful, and above all, deeply attentive to the artworks! Inspired, I thought, ‘This is really a good thing to do.’"
That experience led to her ongoing work with the NMED program, thanks in large part to Dr. Rita Charon, the program's visionary founder, whom Burnham describes as "the great muse of all narrative medicine activity."
Wide Awakeness to the World
In addition to her work with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons medical students, Burnham now teaches an elective course titled Works of Art and Wide Awakeness to the World. The title comes from Maxine Greene, a longtime professor at Columbia Teachers College who was passionate about the arts and a mentor to Burnham. Greene believed that being fully “awake to the world” was to be full of aesthetic possibility, while being “unawake” was an indifference to the world.
Students in her course come from a range of backgrounds and professions. The NMED program draws from a wide pool of people interested in healthcare—from active clinicians, aspiring medical students, and patients seeking to understand their own illness to the occasional visual artist and journalist. Sometimes they are physicians practicing art on the side; sometimes they are artists wanting to contribute to best practice in healthcare. Burnham recalls that one particularly engaged student was a hypnotist who brought unique and thoughtful insights to the discourse.
"Everyone is contributory; everyone comes awake!" says Burnham. "We cultivate the open eye. Having studied the arts before doesn't necessarily make you more awake in the presence of a work of art.”
Student Transformations
Throughout the semester, Burnham’s students study a single work of art on their own, journaling their unfolding experience with it. The results can be remarkable, she says. The hypnotist, for example, had an incredible experience with the project. He stumbled upon a small photograph by a Japanese photographer featured in the Met's Asian Art galleries. Through the program, he acquired the resources and direction to contact the living photographer, exchanged emails, and incorporated the artist's own words into his final paper. The project contributed to the museum's knowledge of the artwork itself.
Another student studied a ceiling work from Papua New Guinea in the newly installed Rockefeller Wing. The student got the guard's permission to lie down underneath it. "In that moment, the cosmic nature of the ceiling work opened," Burnham recalls. “It's a perfect example of how different ways of looking can transform one's experience with art.”
Yet another student, an emergency room physician, fell in love with an abstract black-and-white painting by the artist Franz Kline. "The sensations I experienced are indescribable; they go beyond ontology, beyond the 'Being' of Heidegger,” she wrote. “Yet, I somehow have experienced this same expansive feeling of infinity in the silent encounter with very old or vulnerable patients and with babies.”
The class participates in what Burnham calls "slow art encounters" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, spending extended time with individual works. A photojournalist in one of her classes particularly loved the process, finding natural connections between photography and painting, and wrote to capture the experience: “It was marvelous to meet the glorious African Nkisi you chose for the group—fierce, fertile, sacred, sweating with blood and palm oil, feathers and snakeskin, reinvigorated by the moon, and that mouth bulging with bishimba—astonishing.”
Learning to Look in Healthcare
For Burnham, the skills developed through sustained attention to artworks support multiple connections to the practice of medicine and the clinical encounter. Observing, paying attention to details, listening to others, and understanding how we arrive at interpretations all play a part in both attending to artworks and to patients. But what may be most important is tending to the physicians themselves. As one student said, coming to Narrative Medicine after years of practice, “it's finding a way to keep your heart open.”
Burnham also believes in giving students time to develop their own insights. "Giving of yourself, learning to look, and being open to change can alter your interpretation or your experience with a work of art," she notes. The same principle applies in medicine, where slowing down and truly seeing a patient can transform the quality of care.
Burnham's teaching philosophy centers on creating space for discovery rather than prescribing outcomes. "You can't force transformative moments," she emphasizes, "but you can create the conditions where they might happen." She is open to where students' interests and instincts lead them, whether that's lying under a ceiling work, tracking down a living artist, or simply spending an hour with a single painting.
About the Program
Columbia University’s Master of Science in Narrative Medicine prepares health professionals, writers, and scholars to apply the skills and values of narrative understanding to improve outcomes for both patients and caregivers. It offers a rigorous and in-depth study of close reading of creative texts, illness and disability narratives, narrative ethics, philosophy, creative writing, and other perspectives. The master’s program is available for part-time or full-time enrollment. Learn more here.
