A New HoMA Exhibit Explores Your Brain on Art

“Pololia (Jellyfish),” glass seed beads and copper wire, 2020-21, by Bernice Akamine. Honolulu Museum of Art, purchase 2026. Photo: Courtesy of Ka‘iulani Akamine

We’ve all heard about flow state and the wonders of being locked in or deeply immersed in an activity or task. But can art get us there?

Vital Connections: Art & the Brain, a new Honolulu Museum of Art exhibit, answers that affirmatively, exploring how art positively stimulates the brain to promote neuroplasticity and well-being. The show, which runs from Sept. 12 to Jan. 10, 2027, is one of the first museum exhibitions globally to delve into the relationship between art and neuroscience. It emerged from a collaboration between HoMA and clinicians and neuroscientists at Honolulu’s Brain Health Applied Research Institute, or B+HARI.

“Art is now cast as the fifth pillar of health,” and some doctors now recommend museum visits and artmaking to help offset conditions like depression and memory loss, says HoMA director of curatorial affairs Catherine Whitney.

Whitney curated the show with the help of Ma Ry Kim, an internationally recognized architect who co-founded B+HARI with Dr. Kazuma Nakagawa, head of the Neuroscience Institute at The Queen’s Medical Center and chief of neurology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine.

While working together on a previous HoMA exhibit, Kim told Whitney about her neuroscientific pursuits, which include creating B+HARI’s brain training program. The pair soon were envisioning an exhibition where visitors could reset their nervous systems and experience brain benefits. Research shows that engaging in the arts can help with attention and memory and rewire the brain in beneficial ways, Whitney says. “We now have scientific evidence, and it’s exploding in wonderful ways.”

Saskatchewan artist Ruth Cuthand’s “PTSD,” 2025. Glass beads, thread. Honolulu Museum of Art, purchase 2026. Courtesy of the gallery/art placement inc.

The HoMA exhibit features the work of 20 artists, including Bernice Akamine, Ruth Asawa, Chuck Close, John Koga, Richard Misrach and Georgia O’Keeffe. Here’s what visitors can expect: They’ll first enter a dark, moody environment and see brain scans made from beads by Saskatchewan artist Ruth Cuthand. Then they’ll move into a parasympathetic reset area, containing a breathing box. “You get rid of all the traffic and the stressful emails, and you put your brain into a space where you can focus and tap into your sensory and cognitive openings,” Whitney says.

Visitors will then explore the connection between science and art, specifically perception and memory. The next section is about the connection between art and nature, and how both are vital to physical and cognitive health. There’s an immersive piece called “Tidal Pools” by Ellie Schmidt, who filmed underwater tidal pools that ripple and flow. “We have beanbag chairs that we hope evoke rocks, and you go in there and reset your tension barometer,” Whitney says.

The last section is about “flow,” described as a state of mind where concentration becomes effortless. When this happens you produce serotonin, feel-good hormones, as a reward. “We want to teach people how to get into flow state intentionally,” says Kim, who sits on the inaugural advisory council for the Global Brain Care Coalition, established by the McCance Center for Brain Health at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “It’s one of the healthiest states, but people don’t know how to access it. We’re using artmaking and art observation as the mechanism to teach people how to flip that switch on their own.”

Whitney says the purpose of the exhibit is to share recent neuroscience research and findings with the community and to inspire people to adopt behaviors that foster wellness. “It’s getting people to realize that art is more than just a luxury,” she says. “And the hope is that people walk away from the exhibit feeling better.”

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Diane Seo is the editorial director of HONOLULU Magazine.