Jets vs. Sharks. Jocks vs. nerds. Art vs. science. All legendary rivalries…but do they really need to be? What benefits are there to drawing up and subsequently encouraging such disparities between labels? That’s the thing: There aren’t any.

Take “art vs. science,” for example. So often the domain of debate over career paths and education funding, these pursuits aren’t actually opposites, they’re complements—disciplines that have the potential to bring out the best in one another when practiced together. In Houston, arts spending rises over the $1 billion mark, and the medical industry is…well, anyone who doesn’t know someone who works in it here probably only just moved in days ago. The city makes for an ideal environment for both practices to thrive while being entwined.

“Everyone has their own stress relievers. For me, it’s art, and through that, I’m able to decrease my stress levels, heal, focus on something else, and redirect my stress into something that’s productive and something that still helps others,” says Dr. Dalia Moghazy, a painter, interior designer, and OBGYN with the Texas Children’s Hospital Pavilion for Women. “But I also find that I’m using my creativity in medicine all the time, because not everything is black and white.”

Dr. Moghazy also notes that painting helps build up her hand-eye coordination, which makes her even more careful and precise when performing surgeries. While medicine is her primary career path, she still takes on a few commissions per month for paintings and interior design, sometimes even for her fellow health care professionals.

In November 2024, she took part in the Physician Art Show, which featured works by medical personnel and supported the children’s cancer nonprofit Sunshine Kids. The exhibit was presented by the Arts of Healing, founded in 2017 by Lori and Dr. Isaac Raijman—himself a painter in addition to his gastroenterology duties. The organization came together when the couple realized there was a demand for gallery shows with art by medical professionals. They began with one for Dr. Raijman’s own paintings in 2008, hosted at Hotel Zaza. Three hundred people showed up.

“It was so energizing and just magnificent. All people talking about art and whether you loved it or you didn’t love it. It was just new discussion, right?” Lori says. “And people that normally wouldn’t be in the same room together. It was a group of physicians, a group of his patients, and people that were just in the hotel. So there was this ‘wow’ energy that I thought, ‘Okay, we need to replicate that.’”

The Arts of Healing has since provided creative opportunities for over 60 doctors, welcomed over 3,000 visitors, and raised over $700,000 for other health care nonprofits like Sunshine Kids, Elkins Pancreas Center, and the Lung Force Initiative. The participating physicians enjoy their creative pursuits, and good causes receive the funding they need to keep offering services. Lori also helps get physicians’ artworks into galleries at hospitals and private collections.

“The art is an outlet, and it strengthens your training at the same time,” she says.

The Health Museum has its own initiative, similarly named the Healing Arts Program, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to its mission of promoting public health and general anatomical knowledge. It offers art workshops on select Sundays throughout the month, specially tailored to encourage mental well-being. The Healing Hands gallery show, on view until the end of February, features 24 artists and writers (including Dr. Moghazy) expressing their feelings on caregiving work. Not everyone in the exhibition works in the health-care industry, but they’re still responsible for the medical well-being of a loved one.

Caregiving can be a lonely, stressful undertaking, and many individuals feel unable to voice their concerns because they aren’t suffering in the same ways as their patients or charges. Healing Hands gives them a voice and sheds light on the toll it takes to tend to others’ health, often at the expense of your own.

“What is a caregiver? At what point do we have to step into that role, and how can we have more compassion towards caregivers, whether we’re the patient or the grandmother, grandfather, or even children, so we can have all these stories provide a lens to what they’re experiencing,” says Rose Tylinski, the Healing Arts Program’s manager.

She helped launch the initiative last year, and after multiple conversations with medical partners decided that a spotlight on caregiving would be the most beneficial to everyone involved in the show. It enabled participating artists and writers to have a nonjudgmental forum to discuss the complexities of their lives, and it opened Health Museum visitors to a frequently overlooked aspect of medicine.

“The US has a mental health crisis, and particularly with health care workers. I know that many suffer from everything from stress, burnout, exhaustion, depression, anxiety, PTSD,” says Tarren Vielma, a science educator at the Health Museum who also works as an ICU nurse. “Health care is so busy taking care of everybody else, but who’s taking care of you? If you have a supportive network of family or friends or loved ones, that’s great. But if you don’t, you also have to have, in my opinion, a personal outlet.”

Saxophone is her preferred form of creative expression, though she also claims to be a “very bad piano player and a terrible flute player.” Music provides the same physical and mental benefit to health care professionals as visual art, requiring skillful hands and abstract thinking, as well as offering a peaceful respite from the demands and major mental health hazards of a life in medicine. Vielma also believes that a simple “thank you” can help prop up frazzled, frustrated medical workers.

“I think what we can do as non–health care workers is to definitely thank them, and to also just continually check in…especially with those crazy schedules,” says Tylinski, whose sister is a nurse. “I can’t even imagine the overnight schedules, the long-hour shifts, and everything like that. Check in and just ask about their day.”

Patients, too, benefit from immersion in the arts as a stress buster. About 20 Houston-area artists and arts organizations—such as Aurora Picture Show, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Houston Symphony—participate in the Periwinkle Arts in Medicine Program at Texas Children’s Cancer and Hematology Center. Launched in 1997, it brings visual art, music, and writing to kids undergoing long-term treatments.

“We bring in professional artists that really just want to normalize the environment, give kids positive exposure to the arts, whether it’s a patient or a sibling, [and] give them opportunities to express themselves. Have some sense of control in their day, make decisions,” says Carol Herron, Periwinkle Arts in Medicine Program coordinator.

The artists make visits to patients’ bedsides or in common areas where they can gather and enjoy a more social atmosphere. Depending on the day, they may create works while the children look on or help the kids make projects of their own. Periwinkle also hosts shows with visual art by patients and siblings, as well as Postcards from the Road, where visitors to the shows can write encouraging postcards to the kids about their favorite pieces.

“It’s so important for the children to get the feedback that their art is touching people out in the community,” Herron says.

Periwinkle’s community programs director Erin Locke says that the initiative presented around 6,765 “encounters” in 2024. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the kids had around 11,000 options. As with doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals who find solace in the creation process, the Periwinkle programming allows for a sense of control in situations where control can sometimes prove a scarce resource.

“So many of the kids that we work with are really removed from their peer group and from everyday childhood experiences of going to school, going to art class, reading a story, all of the things that you get when you’re healthy and able to go to school every day and play with your friends,” Locke says. “And what I see kids really gravitate toward is exposure to something new. The choices they make when they’re working with us may be the only choice that they get to make in their day.”

Even outside of the medical industry itself, Houston’s arts institutions understand that creativity and science intersect. At Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, for example, the Designing Motherhood show—on view until March 15—examines the artistry behind devices used before, during, and after pregnancy. It also includes sculptures and paintings by parents, juxtaposing the clinical against the creative while looking into questions of agency (something Periwinkle works painstakingly to provide) and the need to feel heard (much like Healing Hands). Visitors can also walk through the history of the often terrifying-looking medical devices used on pregnant people and how they’ve undergone subsequent redesigns from those who actually underwent the birthing process.

All of these shows, organizations, and programs embody a push toward STEAM—science, technology, engineering, art, and math—rather than the more common STEM. Because the world is better when these concepts and ideas work together rather than getting pitted against one another.