Credit: Audience at Guggenheim during the Lancet Photo Essay Launch (2025). Photograph by Filip Wolak.
Information from this Article is Sourced from the Corresponding Press Release
On September 25, 2025, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, a landmark moment for the arts and health movement unfolded. The Jameel Arts & Health Lab and The Lancet launched the first installment of their Global Series on the Health Benefits of the Arts with the unveiling of the photo essay, “Visualising Relationships Between the Arts and Health.”
Presented as part of UNGA Healing Arts Week, a city-wide celebration coinciding with the United Nations General Assembly, the exhibition gathered leaders from the World Health Organization, the Guggenheim, NYU Steinhardt, and Community Jameel. Musical performances, poetry readings, and reflections from global voices made clear: the arts are not just enriching, they are essential to health.
Why This Launch Matters
Credit: Christopher Bailey, WHO Arts & Health Lead and Co-Founding Director Jameel Arts & Health Lab presenting alongside ‘Camps Breakerz’ photograph at the Guggenheim during the Lancet Photo Essay Launch (2025). Photograph by Filip Wolak.
For the arts and wellbeing field, this is a historic shift. Long known to practitioners and artists, the health benefits of creative engagement are now being illuminated through both scientific evidence and visual storytelling.
The photo essay, curated by Stephen Stapleton with an international team, features 30 images highlighting how the arts support health in diverse contexts:
- Dance programs for Parkinson’s patients
- Creative aging initiatives in museums
- Art projects for children in crisis zones
- Hospital programs where visual art becomes part of the healing environment
Each image combines artistic quality with human impact, reminding us, as Irving Penn once said, that a good photograph “communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person.”
SeeingHappy’s Perspective
Credit from SeeingHappy:
Gregory Herpe
“HAPPY & HOPEFUL“
At SeeingHappy, we celebrate this initiative as a milestone that validates what drives our own mission. We have long believed that photography is not only a way to document wellbeing but a practice that enables it.
- Show, Not Just Tell: Research data demonstrates the value of the arts in health. A photo essay shows that truth instantly and viscerally.
- Everyday Aesthetics: While the Guggenheim presents global exemplars, SeeingHappy extends this vision into daily life with photos of joy, resilience, and connection taken by ordinary people in ordinary settings.
- From Policy to Practice: The Lancet Series lays groundwork for global policy. Our work grounds it in lived experience, helping individuals and communities frame their own narratives of flourishing.
Photography invites us to do the same. To notice what’s already there. To honor it. To reveal its beauty by the very act of paying attention.
Toward a Shared Future
The launch at the Guggenheim signals that the arts and health movement is gaining momentum on the world stage. For SeeingHappy, it’s a call to continue building bridges between research, community practice, and personal vision.
We are inspired by this historic photo essay and remain committed to advancing the role of everyday photography in shaping perspective, fostering resilience, and enabling wellbeing.
SeeingHappy will keep lifting stories that remind us: the arts belong not only in galleries and reports, but in our daily acts of seeing.
This newsletter was partially edited using ChatGPT-5.
