The art prescription: how 60 minutes in a gallery each month could transform your life

Are you getting your RDA (recommended dose of art)? Along with 10,000 steps and five fruit and veg a day, this small, enjoyable change could make you much healthier – and happier

Age: Art has been around for thousands of years. The drawings in Blombos Cave in South Africa, for example, are estimated to be about 73,000 years old. But this is less about how old and more about how often, and for how long.

OK, how often, and for how long? Sixty minutes a month.

Cave painting? No. Well, if you like, sure (though ask the owner and check for bears first). But this is about experiencing art.

Like going to a gallery? Exactly. Or a museum.

To make me more cultured and interesting? Maybe. But mainly because it’s good for you.

Who says? A study by the Art Fund charity, and more specifically Daisy Fancourt, a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, who wrote the foreword to the report, as well as the book Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health.

And what does Fancourt have to say? “Regular engagement and meaningful encounters with art are now recognised as an important contributor to our health and wellbeing.”

It makes art sound like your five fruit and veg a day, or 10,000 steps. It’s meant to. It’s being called RDA – recommended dose of art. Fancourt says of visiting museums and galleries: “The evidence suggests they should be viewed as health-promoting behaviours, alongside having a balanced diet, regular exercise and spending time outdoors.”

OK, but one study, by a charity that exists to get people to go to galleries … Another study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, working with data from 2,148 adults in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, found a 48% lower risk of depression for people going to museums, theatre and cinema once a month. You want more?

You’ve got more? Another study, published in the journal Brain, Behaviour and Immunity, found “evidence that authentic art viewing engages biological processes linked to stress reduction and immune modulation”.

“Authentic” – is that relevant? Yes, the interesting thing about this study is that it compared the physiological impact of viewing original artworks in a gallery with looking at reproductions in a laboratory.

And? The positive effects were “not observed when the same works were viewed as reproductions”.

So the Starry Night phone wallpaper, which I see about 17,000 times a month, doesn’t count as my RDA? No.

Do say: “Thanks, I’ve been feeling great ever since my GP prescribed the Barbara Hepworth show.”

Don’t say: “And they do great doughnuts in the gallery cafe.”