About 100 people, many from UNM's cultural studies departments and the School of Medicine, turned out for the opening of a new exhibition at the University Art Museum aimed at connecting art and the management of pain Tuesday.
The exhibit consists of about 30 pain-related pieces ranging from 17th century etchings and sculptures depicting the crucifixion of Christ to contemporary black and white photographs of war-wounded and drug addicts.
Kathleen Howe, the curator of the museum, put together the exhibit, "Pain, the 5th Vital Sign," with Dr. David Bennahum, a professor of internal medicine at UNM Hospital's Department of Family and Community Medicine. She said the purpose was to bridge the gap between changing views of pain and the visual representations of it.
"There's a whole dialogue about how pain should be treated in the medical and human studies communities," she said.
To kick off the exhibit, David Morris, a visiting chairperson in UNM's General Honors Program, gave a speech about changing views on pain and their historical relation to art. Morris wrote 1991's "The Culture of Pain" and a 1998 collection of essays, "Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age."
He said the treatment of chronic and acute pain has traditionally not been considered important in an age of hurried health care, but that was changing.
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"We have been raised in a culture in which we are raised to believe pain is no more than a neurological event," he said. "That's a circumscribed way of looking at it. History shows that people have tried to find meaning and make sense of pain."
The pieces in the exhibit represent changes through history as people became aware of the effects of pain, such as advances in anesthetics for amputations and childbirth.
Morris said the images of Christ represent the idea of attributing meaning to pain.
"Pain becomes the medium for examining the God who is at the same time human," he said.
Bennahum said the idea for the exhibit came from an earlier exhibit on death, which he worked on with now-retired museum director Peter Walsh.
The events of Sept. 11 occurred during the planning of the exhibit, and several pictures and articles are included as part of the event.
"Now everyone is sharing the same pain," Bennahum said.
Bennahum said he hoped the exhibit would reconnect those in the medical field with patient pain.
"Pain is our destiny," he said. "We all have or will experience it. We need to be able to reach out and touch people in pain."
"Pain, the 5th Vital Sign" will run until Dec. 9 at the University Art Museum, which is in Popejoy Hall.
