Amy Herman
Amy Herman, a lawyer and art historian, uses works of art to sharpen observation, analysis and communication skills. By showing people how to look closely at painting, sculpture and photography, she helps them hone their visual intelligence to recognize the most pertinent and useful information as well as recognize biases that impede decision making. She developed her "Art of Perception" seminar in 2000 to improve medical students’ observation and communication skills with their patients when she was the Head of Education at The Frick Collection in New York City. She subsequently adapted the program for a wide range of professionals and leads sessions internationally for the New York City Police Department, the FBI, the French National Police, the Department of Defense, Interpol, the State Department, Fortune 500 companies, first responders and retailers. In her highly participatory presentation, she demonstrates the necessity for astute visual literacy and how the analysis of works of art affords participants an innovative way to refresh their sense of critical inquiry and skills necessary for sharper performance and effective leadership. The program has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The CBS Evening News, and Smithsonian Magazine, among others. Her TED talk, "A Lesson on Looking," went live in December 2018.
Her book, "Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life," was published in May 2016 and was on both the New York Times and Washington Post best-sellers’ lists. Her second book, "Fixed: How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem-Solving," will be published in December 2021.
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Book:
Fixed.
The Fine Art of Problem Solving
Current Issues / Politics / Social Science
HarperCollins Publishers
December 2021
ISBN 9780063004849
320 pages
An art historian and lawyer who uses works of art to teach us how to hone our perceptions and visual intelligence, presents a paradigm-shattering twist on problem solving that helps us find solutions to the problems we face every day.
As technology has become essential to our daily lives, our reliance on the internet and our electronic devices has exploded , short-circuiting our brains and weakening the critical skills we need to find solutions to difficult issues. Amy Herman has developed a unique approach to problem solving that uses works of art to revitalize our minds and help us think creatively. She’s trained thousands of people from organizations around the world, including the FBI, CIA, Navy SEALs, the IMF, Scotland Yard, Interpol, and the State Department.
In Fixed., Herman outlines her step-by-step approach, providing a fresh set of tools to help us kickstart our critical thinking skills and enable us to find solutions to some of our most intractable problems. Herman explains the artist’s use of the creative process and teaches us how to analyze paintings, sculpture, mixed media, photography, and contemporary art. By learning how to look at these works more astutely, we hone our powers of perception and discover deep-seated truths about ourselves that often prevent clear-thinking and optimal decision making. Once we recognize our biases, we can overcome them and see solutions we were previously blind to. Herman’s approach doesn’t take an art degree—only the willingness to open our eyes and our minds.
Things go wrong all the time. Fixed. offers an innovative and proven way to see problems differently—and craft better solutions for productivity, profit and peace. More/less
