Editor’s Note: Here at the Penn Memory Center, the communications team has been trying out a weekly letter we call “Sunday Reads” to keep you updated on what’s been happening and what we’re currently reading in our office. To see this in your inbox first, fill out your name and email address at the top of your screen or email joyce.lee2@uphs.upenn.edu.
September at the Penn Memory Center is marked by leaves yellowing outside our research offices in Ralston, by a new crop of student interns joining our buzzing teams, and by the opening of the Philly opera season.
At first glance, we (a medical center) have very little to do with the opera. But just a few months ago, Opera Philadelphia came to us with an exciting idea: to create an opera centered around Alzheimer’s disease.
The truth is: if you sit in on one of our diagnostic meetings, you’ll quickly find there’s no one typical story of this disease. But what we hear about Alzheimer’s disease in our general media too often follows the same plot.
Sky on Swings seeks to change that.
PMC Co-Director Dr. Jason Karlawish worked with Opera Philadelphia on a chamber opera told through the eyes of a person living with Alzheimer’s disease. He’s hopeful that it will show a story beyond “just a wasted mind engaging in meaningless and intentionless activities, that there’s a person there who’s suffering but also trying to make sense of and enjoy life.
“Every experience is different,” he says. “And patients do indeed have experiences; the stereotypes that they are out of it or unaware are just that – stereotypes.”
(Sky on Swings will premiere on the 20th. Now is a great time to book tickets: mention or use the code “PMC” to get a 20% discount.)
Opera is not the only art form that encourages reflection in the aging space. Last month was the 50th anniversary of the wheelchair symbol, a now ubiquitous sign for disability and accessibility. Far from being exclusionary, this symbol “actually belongs to all of us,” design professor Elizabeth Guffey writes.
In particular, Elizabeth was born with cerebral palsy and grew up with partial mobility. When the symbol was first released, she felt it “whisper[ed] a message of inclusion directly to [her].” Fifty years of this symbol — from Denmark in 1968 to now in 2018 — has shown her how a design can bring people together and remind us of what we seek: a world that accommodates everyone, disabled and abled alike.
Another artist who turns to art as a way to reflect and engage with complex ideas is Patricia Moss-Vreeland. Last year, we welcomed Patricia to display her art centered on creativity, memory, and metaphors in our gallery space at the Perelman School of Advanced Medicine. She also led a series of inventive art workshops for our community members. To those with memory impairments, she says: “You have this loss [but] still have the ability to create. You never lose that.”
Indeed, that’s what our patient-artist Carl Duzen has shown us. With his stunning copper wire artwork on display in the Art of the Mind gallery space, he’s given us a glimpse into his Alzheimer’s disease beyond the clinic.
His neurologist and our Co-Director Dr. David Wolk says, “[Carl] really had the eye to see that there was a real texture, patterns, and colors that came from the materials he was collecting, that were just really intriguing to look at. And it was the vision of his wife, Susan, who said: ‘Well, we can actually form portraits of this found art.’”
Together, we’re discovering the value of artistic reflection in the space of Alzheimer’s disease. Art is giving us the views, the perspectives, the language we can use to talk about this disease. Revealing to us the stories we don’t often hear about with this disease.
You can join us too. Visit Carl and Susan’s exhibition today (directions here). Or grab tickets to Opera Philadelphia’s Sky on Swings next weekend. Tell us your thoughts, your views, your opinions.
Let’s start a conversation about art in this space.
Best,
Penn Memory Center Communications Team
Terrence Casey and Joyce Lee