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 is a developing framework I use to bring deep looking, somatic attention, reflection, and art-making into relation. It grows out of my training as both an artist and clinician, but it is not psychotherapy.

 

I first tested the framework that would become museotherapy in 2022 through a one-time public art program centered on Joseph Young’s Topographical Map in downtown Los Angeles, presented as part of Illuminate LA, curated by Anuradha Vikram for the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture. I used close looking, bodily attention, reflection, and art-making to see what changed when participants encountered an artwork through more than interpretation alone.

 

In 2023, I brought that developing structure into a museum setting through Mental Health and Well-Being in the Museum, a pilot at LACMA that I spearheaded and was co-presented with Westmont Counseling Center. From there, the framework continued to evolve through invited programs at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art and the Getty Research Institute. Each iteration changed with the site, the artwork, the participants, and the ethical conditions of the encounter.

 

I adapt close-looking practices through body-based entry points, consent, pacing, and attention to what participants may choose not to disclose. I am less interested in arriving at a correct interpretation or a resolved outcome than in what becomes available through sustained attention, embodied response, and relation.

 

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. (Mental Health and Well-Being in the Museum highlighted in LA Weekly.)

Experience Art as Therapy, Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art, 2023–24 — expanded testing across multiple exhibitions and participant groups.

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.