ABSTRACT
Over the past twenty years, art museums have emerged as a venue for cultivating the visual observation and communication skills of health professionals. “The Art of Attending” describes one such program at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum. The chapter details how the USF program responded to and diverged from model programs by combining discussions of artworks using Visual Thinking Strategies, an established museum education tool, with methods from studio art, dance and music. In combination with debriefing with health professions faculty, these activities were practiced to foster close observation, awareness of cognitive bias, comfort with ambiguity, openness to different perspectives and self-awareness in students.
