The Arts in Health (AIH) initiative’s program calendar opened on September 23 with a Well-Being Concert for Rutgers-Newark nursing students created in partnership with the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall. The event featured Philadelphia cellist Arlen Hlusko and was hosted by artist, neuroscientist, and psychiatrist AZA Allsop of Yale University. Allsop was recently named AIH’s Scientist in Residence for a one-year term.
A growing body of research examines how engagement with arts and culture relates to physical, mental, and social well-being. Rutgers and Mason Gross have been nurturing this connection for several years, via the Arts in Health Research Lab, founded in 2023, the Scarlet Arts Rx series for students, which features art-making activities and opportunities to observe arts activities, and the 2025 appointment of Ian Koebner as endowed chair and associate professor of Arts in Health.
Koebner says his goal at Rutgers is to build on that foundation across four areas: student well-being, scholarship, learning and curation, and public programming.
“What we are building upon at Rutgers is a growing body of evidence supporting that deeply held human intuition: cultural engagement is a health behavior, much like physical activity or healthy eating,” he says.
Read more about Arts in Health’s 2026/27 programming on Rutgers Today.
Image credit: John Munson/Rutgers University