New research found that cortisol levels dropped among volunteers who spent 20 minutes looking at masterpieces at London’s Courtauld Gallery
Ella Feldman - Daily Correspondent
November 6, 2025 4:45 p.m.
Vincent van Gogh paintings on display at the Courtauld Gallery earlier this year Ben Montgomery / Getty Images
Feeling stressed? Consider a trip to your local art gallery.
Visiting an art gallery may relieve stress and calm the body’s inflammatory responses, according to researchers from King’s College London. Their study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was uploaded to the [King’s College London Research Portal](https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/354596251/Physiological_Impact_of_viewing_original_artworks_…
New research found that cortisol levels dropped among volunteers who spent 20 minutes looking at masterpieces at London’s Courtauld Gallery
Ella Feldman - Daily Correspondent
November 6, 2025 4:45 p.m.
Vincent van Gogh paintings on display at the Courtauld Gallery earlier this year Ben Montgomery / Getty Images
Feeling stressed? Consider a trip to your local art gallery.
Visiting an art gallery may relieve stress and calm the body’s inflammatory responses, according to researchers from King’s College London. Their study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was uploaded to the King’s College London Research Portal.
Researchers split 50 volunteers (all between 18 and 40) into two groups. One group looked at masterworks by artists including Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin at London’s Courtauld Gallery. The second group looked at reproductions of the same paintings in a non-gallery environment.
The participants wore digital watches that measured their heart rate and skin temperature to monitor their response to the art during their roughly 20-minute sessions. Saliva samples were taken before and after.
The gallery group appeared to benefit from viewing the artworks. After the session, their heart rate variability patterns were more dynamic, and their cortisol levels fell by an average of 22 percent. Pro-inflammatory cytokines—proteins linked to pain, fever and chronic diseases—also dropped.
Quick fact: What is heart rate variability?
Heart rate variability, which is linked to the autonomic nervous system, measures the variation in time between each heartbeat.
“If art can lower stress, that has real implications for human wellbeing,” Aeron Kim, 35, who participated in the study, tells the London Times’ Ellie McDonald. “It’s very exciting to think that galleries could be used more actively as a basis for recharging.”
Art’s calming effect on the body’s stress and inflammatory responses was less pronounced in the group that looked at reproductions. Their cortisol levels fell by 8 percent on average, and they had no discernible drop in their pro-inflammatory cytokine levels.
“Stress hormones and inflammatory markers like cortisol, IL-6 and TNF-alpha are linked to a wide range of health problems, from heart disease and diabetes to anxiety and depression,” lead author Tony Woods, a program manager from King’s College London, says in a statement from the university. “The fact that viewing original art lowered these markers suggests that cultural experiences may play a real role in protecting both mind and body.”
Based on their findings, Woods and his colleagues concluded that viewing art in a gallery is good for “three different body systems—the immune, endocrine and autonomic systems—at the same time,” Woods says in a statement from the Courtauld.
Other researchers have reached similar conclusions in the past. For instance, a few years ago, psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania concluded that visiting art museums was associated with a variety of positive health outcomes.
“When we enter a museum, we’re entering it with an intention,” lead author Katherine Cotter, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told WHYY’s Peter Crimmins in 2022. “We engage different mindsets and different cognitive processes. Once we get into the meat and potatoes of the museum visit, we see ourselves more concerned communally, thinking about how things are interrelated in the world more broadly.”
The new research supports what many art enthusiasts already suspected, says Jenny Waldman, director of the Art Fund, which co-funded the study alongside the Psychiatry Research Trust.
“What’s particularly exciting is that the findings show these benefits are universal—they can be experienced by anyone,” she says in the Courtauld’s statement. “We want to encourage everyone to make time to visit their local museum or gallery and experience these powerful effects for themselves.”
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