Museotherapy
Official website for artist Nicole Rademacher
Nicole Rademacher, Rademacher artist, Los Angeles, Chile, Barcelona, interdisciplinary, research-based, contemporary artist, conceptual artist, adoptee, adoptee voices, social practice artist, public practice artist, art therapy
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Museotherapy
Museotherapy uses encounters with art and cultural objects as sites for attention, reflection, embodied response, and meaning-making. In my practice, I bring close looking, somatic attention, reflection, and art-making into relation, drawing from my training as both an artist and clinician. My contribution comes from working as a clinician inside that lineage, without treating the encounter as psychotherapy.
I first tested the framework in 2022 through a public program centered on Joseph Young’s Topographical Map in downtown Los Angeles. In 2023, I brought that developing structure into a museum setting via a pilot program at LACMA, followed by work at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art and the Getty Research Institute.
Across these iterations, the framework has shifted with the site, artwork, participants, and ethical demands of each encounter. I now structure sessions through body-based entry points, consent, pacing, and attention to what participants may choose not to disclose.
Museotherapy continues to inform how I structure facilitated encounters, participatory work, and the ethical conditions around attention, disclosure, embodiment, and relation.
Participants looking and writing at Joseph Young’s Topographical Map, downtown Los Angeles, 2022. Photo: Matías MR, courtesy of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Selected iterations
Topographical Map Walking Tour and Workshop, 2022 — first testing ground for the framework in a public art context.
Mental Health and Well-Being in the Museum, LACMA, co-presented with Westmont Counseling Center, 2023 — first museum-based pilot and an early, explicitly clinical iteration of the developing framework. (Mental Health and Well-Being in the Museum highlighted in LA Weekly.)
Experience Art as Therapy, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023–24 — continued development across multiple exhibitions and participant groups, with increasing attention to the distinction between therapeutic experience and psychotherapy.
Art, Therapy, and the Problem of Repair, Getty Research Institute, 2026 — invited workshop within Suzanne Hudson’s research consortium.
Museotherapy continues to inform how I structure facilitated encounters, participatory work, and the ethical conditions around attention, disclosure, and relation.
