The best thing I've found in Fort Worth so far...

...is the little known but vibrant art culture. There are 3 art museums within stone-throw from my school, and every month, a new collection of local artist's works fills the atrium immediately outside the main lecture hall. It is such a blessing and privelage to exit lecture and see paintings as opposed to yet another research presentation poster. I wholly believe that on a some level, these paintings both keep me from going crazy and remind me why I'm pursuing a medical profession: to constructively participate in both the tragedies and celebrations of life.
I've visited 2 of the 3 museums across the street. Both of their touring installations are amazing. One of them, at The Modern, is of Anselm Kiefers works. Anselm Kiefer was one of the many artist I studied during my undergraduate education, and specifically while I lived in Germany. His work is both mentally and visually provacative, as he lived through the reconstruction of Germany after the second world war. Germany had a great deal of physical devastation to repair, but more importantly the psychology of the nation was in even more distressing shambles, with the shame and guilt that comes with being the perpetrators of genocide. His art exemplifies the struggle of the nation to come to terms with this history. I believe his art is a work of courage because it refuses to let tragedy to remain unadressed, whereby it would be more likely to be perpetuted. With somewhat cryptic symbols and expressions, his work celebrates the possibility of healing without diminishing the grotesqueness of reality.
The Amon Carter Museum has a photography exhibit by Richard Avedon, entitled "In the American West." The installation shows larger-than-life black and white photographs taken mostly in the 1980's of those on the margins of society in the American West. Oilers, waitresses, carnies, ranchers, inmates, and drifters are some of the folks who were photographed, with the oil still soiling their faces and aprons still tied. Avedon is brilliant in his ability to see people; his photos capture both the intrinsic beauty of humans without covering up the blemishes earned in the struggle to make it from day to day at the margins of society. Few of the portraits show a smile. None of the expressions captured appear disingenuine or feigned, and all of the images are graceful. I have not had my 'rotation' yet, but part of our curriculumn at TCOM is to visit this exhibit in what is called the "Eye for Detail" exercise. Our course director will guide us through the exhibit, helping us to see pathology in these photographs. (Scars, facial paralysis, etc.) However, I hope and am confident that we will be encouraged to see these images in a very osteopathic way, as whole people who had dreams, possess beauty and possibility, and are fearfully and wonderfully made.