How To Become Smart? Go To A Museum: Study

During our school days, we had been to different museums where we can see various pieces of arts, relics and other unknown things to us. The question is, did you appreciate them? Perhaps yes. And maybe we did not really know what are the benefits of going to such places. Our teachers told us that it helped us to identify and appreciate more about history, to interpret what art actually means especially an abstract one. We found it boring sometimes because of the old artifacts being showcased that didn't make any sense in present life. However, a study conducted that being just their will make you smarter especially if you know how to value art.

Art Equals Smart

Members of the newly opened museum in November 2011 named Crystal Bridges which was founded by Alice Walton, the daughter of Walmart creator, had conducted a study about the effects of paying visit to museum. So they selected students by lottery then grouped into two. The first group identified as a treatment group, who were visited the museum during the opening day, while the other is the control one, who were not allowed to go to any museum just yet. After going to the museum, the treated group was asked to write down an essay about their response in an art that they are not familiar with.
They also conducted survey assessing their knowledge and tolerance about art, historical awareness and sustaining interest in visiting such places again. After that, they based their findings using the critical-thinking-skills assessment program developed by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and they found out that the treatment group demonstrated stronger critical thinking skills, displayed higher levels of social tolerance, exhibited greater historical empathy and developed a taste for art museums and cultural institutions.

So it pays to see art museum and try to erase the mentality that museums are boring places.  

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