In the Visual Arts Center hangs dozens of student-drawn portraits depicting people impacted by cancer.

Aesthetics of Health, an art and art history department class bridging art and health, tasks students with drawing portraits that are empathetic reflections of the storyteller and their journey, not just their disease. The portraits are featured in the VAC’s “The Storyteller Portraits” installation, which opened last Thursday. Taught by Megan Hildebrandt and Susan Rather, Aesthetics of Health aims to help students confront difficult conversations and to make it easier for patients to tell their stories.

“I am a cancer survivor myself,” said Megan Hildebrandt, associate professor in the department of art and art history. “I was diagnosed my first year of graduate school … (and) that changed the way I think about art and think about healing.”

Hildebrandt said dealing with mortality at a young age led her to create a course that highlights one’s humanity. She began teaching this class in 2015 at the Interlochen Arts Academy and has since taught it biannually at UT.

“The first day of class, I tell them my cancer story,” Hildebrandt said. “I had visuals and the art that I made during that time.”

In the class, students participate in a lecture component where they learn the nuances of art history, visual impact and other traditional art skills. They then apply what they learned to drawing a portrait of one of the storytellers.

Susan Rather, department of art and art history chair, highlighted the importance of developing skills like observation, empathy and cultural sensitivity in students. Rather said she hopes this class will teach students fundamental life skills and how they can integrate them into their lives, regardless of their field of study.

“I know that even students who are students of art history have difficulty practicing fundamental non-judgmental observation skills,” Rather said. “I did see students struggling with … trying to do the observation without interpreting.”

Danielle Gu, an art history and finance senior, took the Aesthetics of Health class last spring. She helped install the VAC exhibition, which also displays her work.

The exhibition is grouped by the students’ iterations of the storytellers.

“Art is really important for representing these journeys and having a space for people to be able to tell their story,” Gu said. “Health (is) a very complicated and very personal journey, but art is a good way for connecting through that.”

Hildebrandt said that she measures her students’ empathy at the start, middle and end of the semester using the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire, which she said, is one of the most respected quantitative tools to measure empathy. By the end of the semester, she noticed an increase in empathy in each of her students.

“I hope (the audience) thinks art (doesn’t have to be) about one thing,” Hildebrandt said. “Art can be not just something that’s beautiful or changing or controversial.(Sometimes), art can just exist to help people.”