Often considered polar opposites, medical science and art share more common threads than you might think. In engaging with concepts of creation, experimentation, manipulation, and representations of life and humanity, both fields demand curiosity and a creative spirit from their practitioners. For four weeks, two worlds harmoniously collided as fourth-year UMN medical students partnered with the Wesiman Art Museum's (WAM) education department to question and consider how art may aid the diagnosis and care of patients.

Booming thunder, bolts of lightning, buckets and buckets of rain—last night’s gloomy evening was the perfect setting for a fairy-tale hero to swoop in, swing the sword, and save the day. While slaying did ensue, audiences dropped dead from looks, not from dragons or witches or what have you. Students, professors, and designers gathered at the Weisman Art Museum and eyed the catwalk, awaiting the annual Student Design Showcase, Between the Seams.

All snow aside, WAM is ready for spring cleaning! Thanks to Professor Juanjuan Wu’s visual merchandising students, the WAM Shop has received a new window display makeover. For the majority of the spring semester, students have been working in collaboration with WAM Shop manager and buyer Marissa Onheiber to create a display inspired by both the museum and our exhibitions.  

“This project challenges our students to exercise their creativity within the parameters of a real budget, space, the WAM image, as well as to a targeted audience,” Wu said.

Many people find a great deal of solace in art museums. There’s something about being surrounded by beautiful things and larger-than-life paintings that feels so grand. But for some, the reality of a museum’s dim, quiet, and sterile insides are not so much inviting as they are downright unbearable. Imagine your shoes, squeaking anxiously across linoleum tiles, dark painted eyes of portraits watching you move through the galleries, or worst of all, becoming lost in maze of the—gulp—contemporary art wing.

At this very moment, University of Minnesota apparel design students are hard at work, crafting one-of-a-kind garments inspired by fairy tale iconography. Over the course of their spring semester, the 18 designers studied the visual language presented in The Wonderful World Before Disney, an ongoing exhibition of postcards that explores the eclectic imagery of popular fairy tales before Disney’s mass marketed adaptations came into dominant the genre.