Pictures at an Examination
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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 99.22; Photograph © 2009 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
SLAVE SHIP (SLAVERS THROWING OVERBOARD THE DEAD AND DYING, TYPHOON COMING ON) (1840)
Joseph Mallord William Turner (British, 1775–1851)
Alexa Miller, who conducts observation sessions with students at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, says Harvard students initially struggle with this painting. “It’s not clear whether the ship is close to land or far away, whether it’s morning or night,” she explains. “At first they get annoyed—they really want answers!” But learning to deal with ambiguity is an essential clinical skill. An elderly patient’s confusion, for example, could be the result of a change in medication, a neurological disease or many other conditions. When the cause isn’t immediately obvious, Marie-Adele Sorel, now a resident and a teaching assistant for the course, knows to proceed slowly and systematically, controlling for as many variables as possible—temporarily stopping a medication to rule out a drug-related origin, say, or taking blood and urine samples to test for infections. “You don’t need an answer to enjoy a painting,” Sorel says, “and you can care for a patient without a full diagnosis.”
