Janneke van Leeuwen

Founder

Janneke van Leeuwen is a visual artist, designer, and social neuroscientist. She has developed an interdisciplinary practice and research programme on the intersection of the creative arts and social neuroscience, with a focus on the relationships between art engagement and production and the brain networks that regulate complex social behaviour, personal and cultural identity, and mental wellbeing. Janneke holds facilitator and trainer qualifications in the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) method, and she is an expert in visual design and communication. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London, where she obtained a PhD in visual art and social neuroscience, in collaboration with the Wellcome Collection and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam.        

Philip Yenawine

ADVISOR

Philip Yenawine co-founded Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) together with cognitive psychologist Abigail House, EdD, in the early 1990s, while he was Director of Education at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (1983-93). Between 1992-94 he worked as Consulting Curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art, and Visiting Professor of art education at Mass College of Art, both in Boston. He is the author of Visual Thinking Strategies, Using Art To Deepen Learning Across Disciplines, and has written six children's books about art. Philip has been a close advisor to The Thinking Eye from the start and shares its mission to promote arts-based learning with VTS as a tool to advance careful observation, critical thinking and social skills. In 2016 Philip co-founded Visual Thinking Strategies at Watershed, which leverages digital technology and media to reach teachers and schools unable to access VTS through traditional, high-cost professional development and curriculum.

“Visual literacy is the ability to find meaning in imagery. It involves a set of skills ranging from simple identification (naming what one sees) to complex interpretation on contextual, metaphoric and philosophical levels. Many aspects of cognition are called upon, such as personal association, questioning, speculating, analyzing, fact-finding, and categorizing. Objective understanding is the premise of much of this literacy, but subjective and affective aspects of knowing are equally important.”
— Philip Yenawine
 

associates

The Thinking Eye collaborates with an international network of art professionals, cognitive neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, philosophers, and social scientists in academic, clinical, and cultural settings.