Art as Medicine: The Clare Feldman Poliakoff Inaugural Lecture
How does art heal? Can creativity transform healthcare? Join us at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for a powerful opening day program launching A Nation of Artists—where medicine, creativity, and human experience intersect.
This inaugural lecture brings together leaders in art, healthcare, and education for an inspiring and timely conversation about empathy, accessibility, and the role of creativity in shaping more compassionate systems of care.
Keynote:
- Dr. Nazanin Moghbeli — cardiologist, visual artist, and Artist-in-Residence at Jefferson Health
Dr. Moghbeli transforms EKGs and diagnostic imagery into striking works inspired by Persian calligraphy—demonstrating how art can deepen empathy, reduce burnout, and reimagine the future of healthcare.
Moderated by:
Cortney L. Reed, Director of Community Engagement, Jefferson Health — Einstein Central Region
Panelists include:
• Megan Voeller — Director of Humanities, Thomas Jefferson University
• Julie Nolan — Art Therapist, Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation Hospital
• Derek Gillman — Distinguished Teaching Professor, Drexel University
Together, they explore how art supports healing, fosters inclusive care, and builds meaningful connections across communities.
| Lecture Only |
| Lecture + Museum Admission |
| Lecture, Museum Admission + Tour |
Registration Options
Lecture Only (Pay What You Wish: $0–$20)
- Full lecture experience
- Support accessible programming at your chosen price
- Reserve your spot
Lecture + Museum Admission
- Full lecture experience
- All-day admission to A Nation of Artists (opening day)
- Museum Admission: Adults $25 | Seniors $23 | Students $10 | Youth $5
- Reserve your spot
Lecture, Museum Admission + Tour Experience
- Full lecture experience
- All-day admission to A Nation of Artists (opening day)
- Museum Admission: Adults $25 | Seniors $23 | Students $10 | Youth $5
- Guided gallery tour (+$5; limited to 15 participants)
- Reserve your spot
All Tickets Include:
- 20% off food & drinks at the Aloft Hotel across the street
- 15% off at the PAFA Museum Store
- 20% off parking at the Parkway Corporation Garage
About the Speakers
Nazanin – Artist Biography
Dr. Nazanin Moghbeli
Nazanin grew up in Tehran, Iran, where she lived through the Iran/Iraq war, the deposing of the Shah, and the Islamic Revolution. These events deeply influenced her evolution as an artist. While living in Iran, Nazanin studied Persian calligraphy, miniature painting, and music. She moved to the United States with her family in 1983, where she pursued dual art and biology degrees at Swarthmore College.
Her post-graduate training spanned the Maryland Institute of Art, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Public Health, a medical residency at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a cardiovascular fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.
As a physician, Nazanin founded the first Women’s Cardiovascular Center at the University of Pennsylvania — a pioneering initiative dedicated to the unique cardiac needs of women — and currently serves as Medical Director of the Cardiac Care Unit at Jefferson Einstein. Her work in medical education has further extended her commitment to shaping the next generation of physicians. These dual pursuits — art and medicine — are not parallel lives but deeply intertwined ones, each informing and enriching the other.
Nazanin creates work at the intersections of seemingly disparate disciplines: drawing, poetry, music, and medicine. Her work is preoccupied with her dual identities as an Iranian and American, artist and physician. It explores the nostalgia, familiar to immigrants from war-torn and post-revolution countries, for a place and time that no longer exists. As Iran struggles to find its role in a rapidly changing Middle East, Nazanin explores her experience as an immigrant and woman of color to find her place in American culture.
Her drawings are made with traditional Iranian bamboo “ghalams,” or quills, and she borrows carefully studied techniques from Iranian calligraphy to create abstract work. Rather than using these techniques as they were originally used — to create religious objects — she explores the secular meaning of line in and of itself. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution, she seeks the complete dissolution of words and instead prefers to create abstract images, her alternative to religious object making.
Photo Credit: Larry Keterson
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Megan Voeller
Megan Voeller is an educator, curator and writer whose research focuses on how contemporary artists engage with concepts and practices of health, healing, and medicine. As Director of Humanities at Thomas Jefferson University since 2016, Megan leads the medical humanities curriculum at Sidney Kimmel Medical College as well as public and patient-centering initiatives including an Artist-in-Residence program with Jefferson Health partners and the Helix Gallery exhibition space. Megan began their career as a curator at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, and as an arts journalist and critic for newspapers and public television. They are a PhD candidate in art history at Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Temple University.
Julie Nolan
Julie Nolan is a board certified medical art therapist specializing in inpatient neurological rehabilitation at Jefferson Moss-Magee - Center City. In her daily work, she supports patients who have experienced a life-altering illness or injury, such as spinal cord injuries, stroke, traumatic brain injuries, and amputations. Working with patients aged 14 through end of life, Julie utilizes art therapy interventions to address the emotional and psychosocial needs of patients, while often also working on physical and cognitive rehabilitation goals.
In addition to practicing clinical art therapy, Julie is a supervisor of other creative and recreational therapy modalities and art therapy graduate and undergraduate students. She also teaches art therapy graduate students in Thomas Jefferson University’s Community Trauma Counseling program.
Recently, Julie has begun working with ARTZ Philadelphia in their Side by Side program to provide monthly art therapy groups for people living with dementia and their caregivers.
Promoting healing, health, and wellness through art therapy and pouring back into the art therapy community by teaching, supervising, and mentoring students brings Julie great joy. Outside of work, Julie spends all her time with her two greatest creations, Ellie and Bohden.
Derek Gillman, MA (Oxon.), LL.M
Distinguished Teaching Professor, Art History and Arts Administration, Drexel University
Derek Gillman is author of The Idea of Cultural Heritage: A Liberal Perspective (3rd revised ed., Cambridge University Press, 2026). With Claire Finkelstein and Frederik Rosén, he co-edited The Preservation of Art and Culture in Times of War (Oxford University Press, 2022).
He was an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he read Chinese Studies, after which he spent the year 1975-6 at the Beijing Languages Institute. He began his career in 1977 in Christie’s Chinese department, before moving in 1981 to the British Museum as Research Assistant for China. Appointed to his first museum directorship in 1985, as Keeper of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, he worked closely with architect Norman Foster on the building’s award-winning Crescent Wing extension, and then completed an LL.M by research in the emerging field of cultural property.
In 1995, Gillman moved with his family to Melbourne, Australia, to be Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Victoria, responsible for International Art, and then in 1999 to the United States, to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where, as President, he oversaw the renovation of a former car factory for studios and museum galleries. From 2006 to 2013, he was President of the Barnes Foundation, stewarding the world-renowned collection to its new home in central Philadelphia.
In 2014 he became Distinguished Visiting Professor at Drexel, and then in 2015 joined Christie’s, New York, as Chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art. In 2016 he returned to Drexel as Distinguished Teaching Professor, Art History and Arts Administration. He is a longstanding member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and a consulting scholar in the Asian Section of the Penn Museum. In 2013 he was Marina Kellen French Distinguished Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin.
About Clare Feldman Poliakoff
Clare Feldman Poliakoff was born in New York, the daughter of Russian-Jewish and Polish-Jewish immigrants. She grew up in very poor circumstances, and simply did not have the means to pursue her love of art.
Following her marriage, she and her husband, Ben Poliakoff, M.D., moved to Southern New Jersey and had two sons. Their oldest son had significant physical disabilities, but through their love, dedication and patience, he became a very successful physician-attorney.
Clare herself was also physically challenged when, in her late fifties, she became blind in one of her eyes. Nevertheless, by virtue of her determination, hard work and her love of art, she became an award-winning sculptress.
Clare Feldman Poliakoff knew how difficult it is to have a disability or raise a disabled child. The Clare Feldman Poliakoff Endowed Fund for Public Programs is, therefore, named in her memory to further the accessibility to, and enjoyment of, art for those with disabilities.
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