What stood out for me from yesterday's science news was the New Old Age blog, posted on nytimes.com which details a program now run by the Rubin Museum in Manhattan and modeled after the long existing program at MOMA, which invites Alzheimer patients and their caregivers to the museum once each month and devises a quiet, soothing,not-necessarily verbal appreciation of art.
At the Rubin, at the program called "Mindful Connections" the visitors are often given a small statue or a piece of fabric to hold and admire. They are shown art they need not look up to see and appreciate.
Why not request that a museum where you live inaugurate a program such as this??? Phone your Alzheimer's Association. Volunteer to help coordinate a program. Both the caregiver and the loved ones get pleasure from this exposure. I think it is important for later stage dementia folks to be exposed to art rather than to historical or science museums. I spent one winter with my husband, when he was in the earlier stages, at the Mesa Children's Museum. We had a year-long membership and he often enjoyed reading about and looking at the geological exhibits, the rocks and the fossils until he recognized that he once knew all about them and began to experience the museum as a loss of formerly known information. This is such an exasperating illness.
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