This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times. “What is your wildest dream for our future?” That is the question written boldly on the 16-by-11-foot blue wall that is featured in “Dreamseeds,” an interactive art and sound installation. Here …
The family of Brendan Costello gathered in the hospital half-light. He had overcome so much in life, but the profound damage to his brain meant he would never again be Brendan. It was time. Brendan had spent four months enduring three surgeries and a lengthy rehab after infections further destabilized …
Dr. Bryant Lin stood before his class at Stanford in September, likely one of the last he would ever teach. Just 50 years old and a nonsmoker, he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer four months earlier. The illness is terminal, and Dr. Lin estimated that he had …
One recent evening, Sandra Demontigny tried to write down when she would die. “I sat down in a corner with a candle next to me, just to create my own bubble, to think and to cry a little,” she said. She had reflected on this moment for years, desperately hoped …
In early 1988, the British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick found himself drowning in letters from people who believed they had survived an encounter with death. “I slowly floated down a tunnel, not afraid in any way but looking forward to something,” one man wrote to him. “When it came I was …