The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., is leveraging its extensive digitization program to apply artificial intelligence to new fields, including pain management. Through partnerships like the PHAROS consortium and a collaboration with McGill University researcher Hannah Derue, the museum's open-access collection of over 61,000 high-resolution images is being used to train AI models for PAin+, a software platform that helps chronic pain patients articulate and track their experiences using art-based mindfulness and machine learning.
This initiative matters because it demonstrates how museums can extend their cultural assets beyond traditional art history into interdisciplinary scientific research. By providing structured, high-quality datasets for AI, the National Gallery is helping to develop drug-free interventions for chronic pain, a major public health challenge. The project also highlights the growing role of open-access digital collections in enabling innovative collaborations between art institutions and fields like neuroscience.