Recently, McMaster University Professor Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins brought her graduate seminar students to the Museum with an unusual assignment. Students in The Secret Life of Things in the Eighteenth Century were asked to select one work of art on display at the Museum and devote their attention to it for one hour. A full hour of looking! Painfully long? Perhaps. But, extraordinarily rewarding.

“I wanted my students to pay attention to how one pays attention to something,” says Dr. Zuroski Jenkins. “The short reflection papers they wrote for this exercise revealed marvelous insight into details of the objects, but also a heightened awareness of what it means to look at something, of what we might know (or not know) by looking, of the material contours of our encounters with things, and of the way thought can quicken, deepen, and flourish when we make ourselves be still with something.”

This supports the findings of Harvard Professor Jennifer L. Roberts (Harvard Magazine) who says that this sort of activity significantly increases both the looker’s appreciation for the art as well as their belief in and understanding of their own powers of patience and observation. She lauds deceleration in our lives, and points out art’s particular ability to facilitate this experience.

Most other things surrounding us on a daily basis help and encourage us to live faster and do things “more efficiently”. Art provides an unexpected gateway to an immersive experience and slowing down our busy lives. Through long looks we hone our abilities to observe, perceive, think and reflect. We come to a greater understanding of the art and ourselves.