Reflections: A Program for People with Dementia and Their Care Partners

Interested in experiencing a fun, free outing accessible to someone with dementia?

About

Reflections visitors holding hands — Visitors to a Reflections program hold hands. Photo by Cornell Watson.

Visitors can join our Reflections Program in three ways.

Public tours at 2 PM on the second Tuesday of every month (we also partner with Duke Family Support, offering tours for those groups at 10:30 AM and 2 PM on the fourth Tuesday of every month). All tours are 90 minutes and end with an interactive art or music activity.

Virtual tours once a month on the second Friday at 2 PM. These are 60-minute virtual versions of our monthly tour, on the Zoom platform.

For facilities and groups, we offer 60-minute tours by appointment.

All offerings are FREE! Contact us by email at reflections@duke.edu to schedule a tour and/or join our email list.

[My mother] absolutely loved our outing to the Nasher last month, saying how it made her feel so stimulated. I would say it made her feel more of this world in a dignified, respected way. What a fabulous program. Thank you for offering it, and I will be sure to spread the word to others I know.
Visitor to the Reflections program

Photo of Reflections visitors by Robin McCall courtesy of ComMotion

Gallery guides and Reflections tour visitors reenact Syzygy by artist María Berrío. Photo by J Caldwell.

Enjoy artwork from the Nasher’s collection through fun conversations, experiences that engage all the senses through hands-on activities, music, movement, and art-making.

Our tours are wheelchair- and walker-accessible, and we advise drop-off at the Anderson entrance. For specific accessibility concerns or questions, please contact us and we will make every effort to make you feel welcome at the museum.

Launched in 2014 based on the Meet Me at the MoMa model, the Reflections Program offers accessible art tours designed for individuals with memory loss in mind. Now a leader in accessible arts interventions for people with dementia, we collaborate with our academic community at Duke and the world.

Creating art with Reflections Program visitors. Photo by Cornell Watson.

Interested in supporting our work?

Stefanie Kahn leads a Reflections tour within *Carlo Dolci: The Medici's Painter*. Photo by J Caldwell.

The Nasher Museum Reflections’s Program is made possible by Stefanie and Doug Kahn in honor of their fathers, Donald Schneider and Mike Kahn; and Ronald and Batsheva Ostrow.

Support

Reflections tour photo by Cornell Watson

Reflections Gallery Guide trainings and workshops are made possible by the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust.

Nasher in the News

How one NC museum is using art and music to unlock memories in people with dementia

The visitors sit in folding chairs in front of a huge, ornately framed portrait of a man holding a gold staff against a blue and floral background.

view article on The News &. Observer | Published January 23, 2020

Watch & Reflect

Above, watch a short documentary film about two families who are regulars on the Reflections tours for visitors with Alzheimer’s. Kati Henderson, a Gallery Guide and former Duke graduate student, created this video for a class at the Duke Center for Documentary Studies.

Reflections tour visitors enjoy an activity in the gallery

Nasher in the News

Repairing Our View of Dementia

It is a rewarding experience each time I lead a virtual art gallery tour for adults with dementia. Though we are over 1000 miles apart physically and multiple decades apart in age, we connect over artwork through the Refle...

file download from The Journal of the American Medical Association | Published November 30, 2022