That Reminds Me

At LSU Museum of Art, Laura Larsen leads tours designed for people with dementia

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Tomorrow, the man in short-sleeve plaid seated in the front row won’t remember how he made his way to the LSU Museum of Art. Like at least half the tour group here in the Bayou Moderne Gallery, he has dementia. He is often confused and finds it difficult to comport himself in public. When tour guide Laura Larsen asks, “What do you see?”, the caregivers of the tour group brace for non-sequiturs, or worse, silence. “Bunnies,” says the man in the front row. Larsen beams.

The work under scrutiny is Hunt Slonem’s Hutch (2012), in which a cluster of, yes, bunnies fills the six-foot canvas in brushed black swoops. A pet subject for Slonem, along with tropical birds and butterflies, the long-eared critters are simply rendered with brushstrokes the artist calls meditative. In mobs, as they are in Slonem’s Hutch series, each animal has his own direction in mind with no apparent care for the mate beside him. But the single portraits Slonem paints give his bunnies no respite; alone, the rabbits seem just that to at least one viewer: unmoored from noise and movement and soft, fluffy fellows to nestle against.

Larsen, who wears her platinum hair loose, surveys the group with quick blue eyes as they consider the painting. Neoexpressionism. Tapestry. Worshipful repetition. Post-cubist abstraction. Such terms have been used to describe and elucidate Slonem’s work since he barreled into the national art scene in the late ‘70s, but on Larsen’s tour today, they won’t be mentioned. With this hutch of snuffling bunnies, she’s after a more extraordinary response.

Art or medicine?

When we meet two weeks later at Brew Ha-Ha Coffeehouse, in Mid City Baton Rouge, Larsen slides over to a wall of local art while I order my coffee. Some two-dozen illustrations by Arlie Opal—an art student at Baton Rouge Community College and a frequent curator of the small exhibit here, the barista tells us—captivate Larsen for a few minutes, likely longer if I hadn’t come to stand beside her. “She must have a pug,” says Larsen, gesturing at two different works that feature the churlish breed. 

[Read more about Arlie Opal and her work in this set of reviews from our managing editor Lucie Monk Carter from the April 2019 issue.]

Born in Brooklyn, Larsen recalls a New York childhood abundant with museums and culture. In her “multi-generational house,” her mother collected antique pigs, and one aunt was an early employee at Fleischer Studios, where her animations included the brawn of Popeye and the curves of Betty Boop.

While the women frequented galleries (“I always thought children all over the world went to the Met with their mom every Saturday”), the men in Larsen’s family tended towards medicine—excepting her father, who worked as a Lynotype machinist for the New York Times. She married a pulmonologist, Rick, but for her part could never choose between art or healing. “I became a nurse, then I got my bachelor’s degree in art history. During the day, I was an art tour guide, working in the major museums and doing walking tours. … But then in the evening, I used to work in an ICU. When you’re in your twenties, you have the energy to do all that. I always had these two things going on.”

She later got her master’s in art history, specializing in American art. Her husband’s work, which included altitude research for the U.S. Army, then dispatched the couple on moves around the country, a peripatetic fate Larsen had never imagined for herself. “I had three generations of family in New York. We were settled!” But by the time she got to Baton Rouge in 1991, she found it almost inane to unpack her suitcase.

This time, though, they didn’t leave. Today, Larsen lives in a cottage bursting with fine art along Claycut Road and relishes the quick access to her favorite local outlets. “I can look up a show at the Manship [Theatre] Friday night, see they still have tickets at 7:00, and be in my seat at 7:20.” She toys with her cup of hot chocolate and shakes her head. “Where else can you do that?”

Memory as a conversation topic with an Alzheimer’s patient seems, at best, thorny territory, but Larsen is nimble and knowing in her work.

Just an elevator ride away from the Manship, the LSU Museum of Art is home to one of Larsen’s more recent passions: leading Art & Alzheimer’s tours in collaboration with the museum and Alzheimer’s Services of the Capital Area. At least three times a year, in spring, Larsen guides a group of adults with dementia—all sorts, not just the titular Alzheimer’s—through a program focusing on three or four of the museum’s displayed pieces.

She has the group look at each work and describe what they see. What feelings do they attach to the art? What memories?

[Read more: After a traumatic injury, Kyle Baughman found his calling in stained glass.]

Memory as a conversation topic with an Alzheimer’s patient seems, at best, thorny territory, but Larsen is nimble and knowing in her work. She earned her doctorate in nursing at LSU, concentrating in gerontology—particularly, in her case, the care of people with dementia—and spent the last years of her mother’s life as a long-distance caregiver when the older woman, still living in New York, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. 

In 2009, she opened a prophetic copy of the Sunday New York Times at home in Baton Rouge. Inside, an article entitled “Keeping Those with Alzheimer’s Engaged” detailed a program begun in 2006 by the Museum of Modern Art. “Meet Me at MOMA” brought patients with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers to the museum once a month for an evening tour and discussion, providing enrichment for adults whose lives were, in many cases, rapidly losing luster. “How beautiful is this?!” Larsen recalls thinking as she saw her worlds collide.

Already, museums around the country were adopting the model, reported the NYT article, but a new study commissioned by MOMA and conducted over nine months by the New York University Center of Excellence on Brain Aging and Dementia offered further comfort in the form of evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, of the program’s positive impacts.

Published later in 2009, the NYU study found that a “Meet Me at MOMA” session led to a self-esteem boost for patients, a greater sense of social support for caregivers, and lightened moods for both. Arts accessibility for the elderly was nothing new to MOMA, but before, museum educators would travel to nursing homes and programs were limited to healthy minds. A growing show of interest from excluded residents with dementia led MOMA to rethink their audience. “They found people with dementia to be just as interactive as the other residents,” says Larsen of the subsequent nursing-home visits. Soon MOMA elected to host the program themselves, after hours. “This opened up a whole new world,” says Larsen.

[Read this: Hunt Slonem's Louisiana home lays bare the expansive imaginings of an artist]

When Dr. Mary S. Mittelman, lead investigator for the NYU study, first observed a “Meet Me at MOMA” program, she was stunned at the level of engagement. “It spoke to the fact that people with dementia in the early stages are people first,” she told NYT. “They have an illness, and it affects certain areas of their functioning but not all. It is obvious they are enjoying the art and responding to their educators.”

On visits to her mother in New York, Larsen trained in the program at MOMA as well as similar initiatives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where Larsen had once worked as a tour guide, and The Rubin Museum of Art. She had no plans for her own program at the time, she says, “but it just fascinated me.” 

In 2013, Larsen spoke with Dana Territo, then director of services at Alzheimer’s Services of the Capital Area, about a launching a similar program in Baton Rouge. 

Bright and beautiful

True to her name, Luz Barona loved her home immediately because of the light. She and her husband, Dr. Narses Barona, moved to the ranch-style house in Baton Rouge’s Garden District in 1965. A week later, Hurricane Betsy came to town. Luz remembers taping the windows and sending a note to her parents, who still lived in her hometown, Cali, Colombia, to let them know the family was safe. The Baronas’ second child—Luz Elisa, soon to be just “Lisa”—was born a week after that.

Over the years, the light-filled home has served as a haven for many, particularly through the couple’s role with the International Hospitality Foundation at LSU. “It became like a consulate here,” laughs Luz, who worked as an architectural draftsperson once the children were out of school.

On tours, Larsen’s a zephyr wafting through the museum, nudging her tour group to connect the art they see with their own primal and long-term memories, those recollections so close to the human core that age and illness have a devil of a time getting at them.

Luz met Narses while working on her dissertation in architecture back home in Cali. When he moved to New York to begin his doctorate at Brooklyn Polytechnic, they exchanged letters. “He was very precise,” says Luz. “His philosophy was that if he was in town, we had to spend at least five minutes a day on the phone or seeing each other in person. When he was in Brooklyn, we had to write each other every day. Even just a little bit.”

They were married on Christmas day, 1958, and moved to the States in 1962. In addition to his thirty-three-year career at Ethyl Corporation (now Albemarle) in Baton Rouge, Narses was also a Fellow for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and taught at LSU. He had served as dean of chemical engineering at Universidad del Valle, in Cali, and had the earlier distinction of being the program's first graduate. He spoke five languages, knew his way around a camera, and loved Shakespeare as well as art. Later, at his wife's request, he learned to dance. He lived with Alzheimer's disease for fourteen years. To the Baronas, Laura Larsen was a godsend.

“She has a wonderful personality. She’s so friendly. She’s so sweet,” says Luz. And she brought the Baronas—who never left a new city without visiting a museum and whose rich collection of paintings is dominated by dozens of cityscapes they’ve seen for themselves—back to the world of art. When Larsen’s Art & Alzheimer’s tours began, in 2014, Narses was already an almost daily visitor to Charlie’s Place, the Baton Rouge-based activity and respite center overseen by Alzheimer’s Services. He enjoyed the programming at the center, but days could be monotonous. Now Charlie’s Place visitors are frequent participants in Art & Alzheimer’s tours. “Laura helped break the routine,” says Luz. “Everybody was treated with respect. They called him Doctor. He was not the patient. That was very good for his ego.” Narses died in November 2017, but Luz has continued to attend the tours alone. “It enriches the spirit,” she says.

Art transports too. Its creators know this—but mere admirers like Larsen can catch the wave. She has an upright piano in her home, inherited from her cartoonist aunt. Larsen’s never been able to play music herself but her husband, Rick, “an excellent clarinet player” who passed away in late 2013, learned the piano by looking at the keys rather than any supplemental sheet music. He’d call for a request, sitting down at the bench. “Summertime,” she said one day.  Even now in retelling she’s mesmerized—he could just press the ivory and lift out a song.

On tours, Larsen’s a zephyr wafting through the museum, nudging her tour group to connect the art they see with their own primal and long-term memories, those recollections so close to the human core that age and illness have a devil of a time getting at them. “I have this all planned before we get there,” says Larsen, who is effusive in her praise to LSU Museum of Art for their years of support. But between the guideposts of her methodology, she’s relentlessly agreeable and charming. “One time, a man told me I was being rude to stand in front of the group when everyone else was sitting. I said, ‘You know what? You’re right!’ So I sat down for the rest of the tour. Later he told me that he was very happy I did that.”

Once an artwork has been discussed among the group, Larsen introduces an activity: for further engagement with Willie Birch’s Memories of Bertrandville, a papier-maché sculpture of a man slouched beneath a tree whose trunk is embedded with various tokens and knick-knacks, she passes around a basket of stuffed animals, hats, and other trinkets, including a plastic beer stein that sparked a half-dozen chuckles. “What would you put on your memory tree?” she asks. Every tour member picks a trinket then takes turns explaining his or her choice, sometimes with help from a caregiver.

Any response—a long anecdote, a request to humble herself and sit down, even just a smile—counts as a victory for Larsen. She just wants to reach people and share a pulsing admiration of art. “The tours enlightened Narses,” says Luz. “They brought him back.”  

To register for or learn more about Art & Alzheimer’s tours, contact Laura Larsen at (225) 284-2487 or at lslarsen2@msn.com.