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I'm interested in the topic of science and art being discussed. Even though art (and music) is treated differently in schools (art as an elective or extracurricular), my guess is art education at both primary and higher levels could be improved with the rest of the educational system for the same reasons... Fine arts seems to be viewed as a good outlet for creativity, yet it seems to be subject to the same "getting everyone to the same place" attitude. At least in my HS, and I think in many art schools/ateliers, achieving realism was the ~"right answer" and we were taught a bunch of rules about what made good art, rather than coming up with our own rules or letting us explore different ways to represent "reality" or really "express" ourselves (~ make our own "stories", share our own perspectives, etc). There was always the possibility of doing something right and wrong. So, art would seem to benefit from science in that respect. And also from neurobiology-- There's a link somewhere on Serendip to a "Brain based visual education" program at a state university ( http://www.public.iastate.edu/~design/ART/NAB/bbased.html ), which seems to be all about recognizing how the brain perceives the world and exploiting subconscious processes. It's similar to the Betty Edwards series "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". See also maybe the page on Serendip about Howard Hoffman, both an artist and psychologist... /exhibitions/hoffman/about.html .