Or: why your social media algorithm should probably be designed by an art therapist
We’ve been thinking about art all wrong.
For the past century, we’ve treated art like it’s this precious, separate thing that belongs behind glass in climate-controlled rooms, visited by hushed crowds on weekend afternoons. We’ve created an entire industry around keeping art away from regular life—as if creativity might contaminate our practical, serious world.
But here’s what we’re missing: while we’ve been protecting art from life, we’ve been protecting life from exactly the kind of thinking that could actually solve our biggest problems.
The Algorithm Problem We’re Not Talking About
Let me start with something that should keep us all awake at night. While tech companies hire behavioral economists and engagement specialists to design social media algorithms, they’re completely ignoring the people who actually understand emotional regulation: art therapists.
Art therapists spend their careers helping people process complex emotions through creative expression. They know how to guide someone from anxiety to calm, from confusion to clarity, from isolation to connection. They understand pacing, emotional safety, and the difference between healthy challenge and harmful overstimulation.
Now imagine if these professionals designed your social media feed. Instead of algorithms optimized for addiction and outrage, you’d have systems designed for actual human flourishing. Your feed would help you process emotions, discover new perspectives, and build genuine connections.
The technology exists. The expertise exists. We’re just asking the wrong people to use it.
The Spatial Intelligence Revolution
Contemporary sculptors spend years mastering how forms move through space, how humans interact with objects, and how to create experiences that feel both surprising and inevitable. They understand flow, rhythm, and the subtle ways physical relationships affect emotional states.
These artists could revolutionize digital interface design. Instead of flat, addictive experiences designed to trap attention, we’d have digital environments that feel as natural and supportive as well-designed physical spaces.
The difference? Sculptors think in three dimensions about how humans actually move and feel. Tech designers think in metrics about how to increase engagement time.
The Confidence Economy We’re Already Living In
Gallery directors have been running the world’s most sophisticated confidence-building operations for decades, and most people don’t even realize it.
When someone enters a contemporary gallery, they’re not just looking at art—they’re being guided through a carefully orchestrated experience of cultural discovery. Good gallery directors know how to make viewers feel sophisticated, curious, and culturally connected. They understand desire, status, and the deep human need to feel part of something meaningful.
These professionals could transform retail experiences by applying the same psychological sophistication to actually serving customers rather than just extracting money from them. Imagine shopping experiences designed to make you feel genuinely good about your choices rather than manipulated into impulse purchases.
The Pattern Recognition Masters
Museum curators are essentially data scientists for culture, though they’d probably laugh at that description.
They spend their careers identifying patterns across time periods, cultures, and artistic movements. They create meaningful connections between disparate elements and present complex information in ways that feel both accessible and profound. They understand context, narrative flow, and how to guide people through discovery processes.
These skills translate directly to data visualization, knowledge management, and any field that requires making sense of overwhelming amounts of information. The difference is that curators prioritize human understanding over raw data optimization.
The Space-Making Visionaries
Installation artists specialize in creating immersive, transformative experiences. They understand how environment affects psychology, how to guide attention and emotion through space, and how to create moments of genuine revelation.
These artists could revolutionize therapeutic environments, educational spaces, and any setting where human transformation is the goal. Instead of sterile, institutional designs, we’d have healing spaces designed by people who actually understand how environment shapes consciousness.
The BS Detectors We Need
Art critics have spent years developing perhaps the most valuable skill in our marketing-saturated world: the ability to see through aesthetic manipulation to analyze what actually works versus what just looks good.
They’re trained to distinguish between genuine innovation and clever repackaging, between meaningful expression and empty trend-following. They understand context, can spot cultural appropriation from miles away, and know how to articulate what makes something actually valuable versus just expensive.
These professionals could write product reviews, evaluate marketing claims, and assess new technologies with a level of cultural intelligence that most consumer advocates lack.
Why This Matters Right Now
I’m not suggesting we replace all data scientists with curators or hand social media over to art therapists tomorrow (though honestly, could they do worse?). I’m suggesting something more radical: that we stop treating art world expertise as decorative and start recognizing it as essential infrastructure for human-centered systems.
The problems we’re facing—mental health crises, social isolation, information overwhelm, meaningless work, environments that make us feel worse rather than better—these aren’t technical problems. They’re human problems. And art world professionals have been developing solutions to human problems for centuries.
We’ve just been too busy keeping art “safe” from the real world to notice that the real world desperately needs what art has to offer.
The Intelligence We’re Wasting
Consider what art world professionals do daily:
They work with limited resources to create maximum impact. They communicate complex ideas to diverse audiences. They understand how context shapes meaning. They know how to create experiences that feel both familiar and surprising. They’re experts at making intangible concepts tangible.
These are exactly the skills needed to address our current challenges, from urban planning to mental health care to education design.
The Practical Revolution
So what would this actually look like?
Start by recognizing that cultural intelligence is a form of expertise, not a luxury add-on. When your organization needs to solve human-centered problems, include people with art world training in the conversation—not to make things prettier, but to bring different kinds of intelligence to the challenge.
When you’re designing workflows, think like a curator. When you’re planning communication strategies, think like a gallery director. When you’re creating digital experiences, think like an installation artist. When you’re evaluating claims, think like an art critic.
Most importantly, stop asking whether something is “practical” or “artistic” as if those are opposites. The most practical solutions to human problems usually involve creative thinking, cultural understanding, and the ability to see beyond conventional approaches.
After all, humans are cultural beings living in constant relationship with meaning, beauty, and each other. Maybe it’s time our systems reflected that reality.
The museum walls are already dissolving. The question isn’t whether art world expertise will escape into everyday life—it’s whether we’ll be smart enough to let it help.
What intersection between art world expertise and daily life do you think has the most potential? This conversation is just getting started, and I’d love to hear your thoughts.