The relationship between art and health stretches back millennia. Moderated by the Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London Hans Ulrich Obrist, this conversation looks at art-making and its connection with medicine and healing practices. The discussion features artist and patient advocate Ted Meyer, Pamela Schaff, Director of USC Keck School of Medicine’s Humanities, Ethics, Art, and Law (HEAL) Program and Jill Dawsey, curator of PST ART’s For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability.
The talk will take place in the VIP Hub inside The Beverly Hills Hotel at Polo Private Lounge.
Refreshments will be served from 1:30pm.
The talk starts at 2pm followed by a Q&A.
Booking is essential as capacity is limited.
Saturday, September 14
1:30pm – 3:00pm (conversation begins at 2pm)
Jill Dawsey is Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Her recent exhibitions include For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability (2024, with Isabel Casso); Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s (2022, with Michelle White); and the touring exhibition Yolanda López: Portrait of the Artist (2021-2024). Past projects include Being Here with You/ Estando aquí contigo: 42 Artists from San Diego and Tijuana (2018, with Anthony Graham) and The Uses of Photography: Art, Politics, and the Reinvention of a Medium (2016, University of California Press). She has organized solo exhibitions and projects with Carmen Argote, Scoli Acosta, Andrea Chung, Yve Laris Cohen, Colter Jacobsen, and Xaviera Simmons, among others. Previously, Dawsey held curatorial posts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah. She has taught curatorial practice at California College of the Arts and art history at the University of Utah and UC Irvine.
Ted Meyer is an artist, curator and patient advocate who helps patients, students and medical professionals see the positive in the worst life can offer. Ted’s decades long project Scarred for Life: Mono- prints of Human Scars chronicles the trauma and courage of people who have lived through accidents and health crises.
Ted seeks to improve patient/physician communications and speaks about living as an artist with illness. As the Artist in Residence at The Keck School of Medicine of USC, Ted curates exhibitions of artwork by patients whose subject matter coincides with medical school curriculum. Ted has curated shows by artists challenged by MS, cancer, germ phobias, back pain, and other diseases. He is a Visiting Scholar at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, is a graduate of the Aspen Leadership Seminars, was the 2017 Sterling Visiting Professorship at Stanford University and has been a TEDx Anchorage and TEDMED main stage speaker. Ted is a recent recipient of both a California Creative Core grant and CAC Individual Artist Fellowship, and the National Association of Practice’s 2024 Patient Advocacy Award winner.
Ted’s personal work mixes art, medicine, and stories of healing and survival, drawing from his experience as a lifelong patient of Gaucher Disease.
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show ‘World Soup (The Kitchen Show)’ in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions, including recent exhibitions Enzo Mari at Triennale Milano (2020) and WORLDBUILDING at Centre Pompidou Metz (2023) and Julia Stoschek Collection Dusseldorf (2022).
In 2011, Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence,and in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize, and most recently he was honoured by the Appraisers Association of America with the 2018 Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Obrist’s recent publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes(2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of Architects (2015),The Extreme Self: Age of You(2021), and 140 Ideas for Planet Earth(2021),Edouard Glissant: Archipelago(2021),James Lovelock: Ever Gaia(2023) Remember to Dream(2023),Une vie in Progress(2023).
Pamela Schaff, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Medical Education, Family Medicine, and Pediatrics, and Director of the HEAL (Humanities, Ethics, Art, and Law) and MS in Narrative Medicine Programs at the Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) of the University of Southern California. She received her B.A. from Pomona College, her M.D. from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC. She completed her pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and maintains her clinical practice at Keck Medicine of USC. Dr. Schaff previously served as associate dean for curriculum for KSOM. She was a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges Humanities and Arts Integration Committee, charged with determining and advancing the role of the humanities and arts in medical education and physician development.
In addition to teaching in the MD and Narrative Medicine Programs, Dr. Schaff designs curriculum that integrates arts and humanities instruction through all four years of the medical school curriculum. She is the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in teaching and mentoring. Her current areas of investigation include professional identity formation, narrative medicine, and the role of the arts and humanities in medical education.
