My 86-year-old father and I are cutting up, causing a commotion at the end of a long table where we are creating a piece of art, alongside a group of other Nasher Museum of Art visitors.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon, and we are moving small pieces of plastic—broken CD cases, six-pack lids, discarded toys—so that they fit into a stencil in the shape of the United States. Our process is inspired by an artwork we saw earlier on our museum tour: artist Tony Cragg’s “Real Plastic Love,” a piece where the artist uses reclaimed bits of plastic to create two dynamic, dancing figures.
Finding googly eyes, my dad holds them to his face. He’s already got a plastic pink bow (I think it once belonged to a Minnie Mouse) fashioned around the collar of his shirt like a bow tie. His goofing off is encouraged by our collaborators—other visitors and museum docents, who laugh along with us.
My dad has always had charisma: a career military chaplain and former minister, he’s had a lifetime of practice in the art of shaking hands while cracking jokes. In the last few years, though, he’s slowed down, becoming less social due to dementia. As his Alzheimer’s progresses, it’s becoming harder to find places where he feels comfortable. Restaurants and stores are loud and unfamiliar, movies and sports too hard to follow, and the outdoors a physical challenge (like many folks his age, he uses a rollator).
That’s why the Nasher’s Reflections tours—which are offered monthly to the public and designed specifically for individuals with dementia and Alzheimer’s and their caregivers—are so helpful. Reflections offers individuals with dementia an opportunity to interact with people and art. Due to the nature of the disease, which can be isolating and make individuals self-conscious in social situations, such an opportunity is important. While studies show arts-based activities may help slow cognitive deterioration, two more tangible benefits of the Reflections program happen immediately: the chance to engage in community and in art.
“One of the wonderful things about using visual art is that the object is right there in front of our visitors—they don’t need linear thinking,” says Ruth Caccavale, a museum educator who has worked on the Reflections program since its inception more than a decade ago. “They don’t need to remember what was just said or the historical context of the work—they can keep referring to what they see right in front of them.”
Each monthly Reflections program begins with what the museum calls a “radical welcome” in the main hall, where participants are met enthusiastically, offered name tags (important when you have memory issues), and introduced to the program’s facilitators, who also wear name tags. Another “radical” part of the welcome is that, since the program requires an RSVP, staff know whom to expect and are positioned in the parking lot to help with access to the museum, offering a golf cart for those with mobility issues. This is a thoughtful touch, especially given the construction and confusing nature of parking on Duke’s campus.
“It’s not an art history class. It’s a conversation.”
After the welcome, docents lead a 45-minute tour that explores two or three works of art—chairs are provided in front of each work of art, prioritizing visitor comfort. The docents, many of whom have worked in the program for years, facilitate a free-flow discussion, asking questions and taking in every comment, frequently calling visitors by their names and encouraging dialogue.
“It’s not an art history class,” Caccavale says. “It’s a conversation.”
After the tour, the program alternates between a 45-minute art-making activity (like our collage-making one) or a music program, featuring professional musicians playing right in the galleries. When Reflections first began the program, Caccavale recounts, staff initially planned to host the program on Monday, the day the museum is closed to the public. They switched gears when they realized that attendees wanted access to the café. And for one more important reason: “The other benefit to that is it’s another opportunity to normalize dementia for the rest of our staff,” Caccavale says.
Normalizing dementia is necessary for many reasons. The disease is becoming much more common: According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 210,500 North Carolinians over age 65 have Alzheimer’s (that’s 11.6 percent of the population over 65), assisted by the 373,000 caregivers helping them through it. And just as it is in the rest of the nation, Alzheimer’s is a growing public health crisis in our state. Enhancing the quality of life for these families matters, and making arts and cultural resources more accessible to this growing population is one way to help.
Other Resources
Another local option for North Carolinians living with dementia is the Dementia Alliance of North Carolina’s Music and Memory at Home program, which supports the important role music plays in well-being. Like Reflections, the program is free of charge.
The program provides a personalized playlist of music and easy-to-use equipment for listening to it to people with dementia—there’s even “music detectives” who help individuals draft their playlists over Zoom. Then, a fully loaded digital music player is shipped to the individual, with all their favorite songs, along with headphones, a Bluetooth speaker, and an easy-to-follow written guide. (I can attest, the process and equipment are as close to foolproof as is humanly possible!)
While there is less IRL socialization in this program, it offers a vital arts-based therapy that can be used daily—and easily. Like the group art making we did at Reflections, the Music and Memory at Home kit brings my family some shared joy—and that is a beautiful thing.
“The challenge of this program,” says Caccavale, “is that we want to keep it small—a tour for 50 is not the same as a tour for 14 [the number that caps a Reflections group].” Reflections works because the small group size allows for intimacy and individualized attention and care. As Reflections program coordinator Laura Tuson attests, the small size is a big plus: “One of the caregivers commented that her mom loves music but could no longer go to the symphony—the huge crowds were too much. Being in a smaller group and having the musician 10 feet away was really appealing.”
Caccavale describes the constraints of the group size as a “balancing act,” as her staff works to make the Nasher’s program more accessible to diverse communities within Durham. Along with leading multiple, regular tours for the Duke Dementia Family Support Program, the museum offers the public program (sign up online to get on the mailing list for RSVPs) and a virtual Zoom one once a month as well for folks who can’t get to the museum. They also work with assisted living communities and other community organizations to arrange tours.
For Caccavale, expansion holds meaning beyond having more people with dementia come to the Nasher: “What we want is for everyone in the community to be on board creating programs for folks with dementia—the Lemur Center, Duke Chapel, DPAC, the Carolina Theatre, the ballpark,” she says.
This vision—and the possibilities for additional social connection and arts engagement it holds—is exciting for those of us navigating life with a loved one who has the disease. What if funding existed for a plethora of cultural activities created specifically for people with dementia? While research shows the cognitive benefits of art and social activity—specifically for individuals with dementia but also for all of us—there’s one thing studies can’t show: the deep-hearted delight of connecting with a person you love but sometimes feel unable to access.
This is the ongoing gift of the Reflections program for me—its tours provide time and space for me to connect, via art and art-related activities, to my father. And to do so in a community of other people who are also affected by dementia helps us all feel less alone.
Along the way, there are unanticipated events, like my father goofing off with the art supplies or another patron describing a painting as “giving off a lot of heat,” that occur, quiet—and not so quiet—moments of real connection between people and paintings, people and art supplies, people and people, and in my case, a father and his daughter.
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