Estimul'Art project. History, art and Alzheimer's

More than ten years working to make the museum accessible

Since 2009, the Museum of History has been working to make the city’s heritage collections and experiences accessible to groups with specific needs, who often are unaware of the benefits of art.

The project Beauty Heals, presented in March 2010, was aimed at hospital patients, their caregivers, and families. It offered them a moment in contact with beauty — experiencing the rhythm, proportions, and harmony of the cloister of the Monastery of Pedralbes — so they could disconnect and leave behind illness and worries for a while. Art as medicine!

Press dossier of the project Beauty Heals
Article: The Monastery of Pedralbes builds a bridge between health and culture

That same year, in May 2010, the first conference was organized to explore the benefits of art.
Under the title The Comfort of Beauty, it brought together specialists in neurobiology, history, art history, and philosophy.

Program of the conference The Comfort of Beauty

These activities continued over time and were later opened to groups of young people at risk of social exclusion.

In 2014, the Museum of History and the Marès Museum signed an agreement with the ACE Foundation to participate in a research project aimed at measuring the effects of museum visits on people with Alzheimer’s disease in its mild or moderate stages.
The museums developed specific activities that took place from September 2014 to February 2015, and since then, with some new visits each year, until 2020.

The project was presented in a seminar in September 2015:
Presentation of the seminar Museums and Alzheimer’s: Memory and Emotions

And the research results were presented in a second seminar, in May 2017:
Program of the 2nd Seminar Museums and Alzheimer’s. Estimul’Art: Memory, Emotions and Experiences