Visit Art Museums to Live Longer?
January 14th, 2020Hmm. I don’t know about the health benefits, but in the the pre-collapse California days of the late 1990s to early 2000s, I found that roaming around art museums was definitely pleasant. I wasn’t particularly interested in art, or, so-called art, but the air conditioning worked and it was generally quiet in museums.
Bonus feature of museums: No bum stench or lunatic ramblings like you get in libraries.
Via: Reuters:
Even after accounting for a wide range of other health and social factors, researchers from University College London found that people over 50 who regularly engaged with arts activities were 31% less likely to die during a 14-year follow-up than peers with no art in their lives.
Those who took part in arts-related activities only once or twice a year still had 14% lower odds of dying during the study.
“These findings support previous statistical analyses and anthropological work suggesting there may be benefits of the arts to individuals as they age,” said Daisy Fancourt, an associate professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London and co-author of the study.
