The small group in the elevator is quiet as we ascend to the sixth floor of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, but when the doors open to reveal a deserted gallery dotted with Martin Puryear’s mysteriously inviting minimalist sculptures and bathed in a mellow afternoon glow filtering through the skylight, one man speaks up. “It doesn’t get any closer to heaven than this,” he says.

It is a Tuesday in mid-November, and the galleries are closed to all but about a hundred visitors—divided into groups of 15 to 20—who have arrived for the museum’s monthly Meet Me at MoMA program. The interactive tours are designed for people with early- to middle-stage Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers, and they feature lectures and discussions on artworks in the museum’s permanent collection and its special exhibitions. The free program has grown significantly since its inception, in 2006 (more than 1,500 people attended from 2006 to 2007), and today’s turnout is the largest ever, according to Riva Blumenfeld, the MoMA educator leading our tour.

Along with Museums, a few other reporters and a television crew are also tagging along today. The program has garnered its share of media attention since it began, but it has seen even more coverage since MoMA announced in October that it had received a two-year, $450,000 MetLife Foundation grant to allow it to create a nationwide outreach program, The MoMA Alzheimer’s Project: Making Art Accessible to People with Dementia, which will include guidelines and training workshops to help other museums, assisted-living facilities, and Alzheimer’s Association chapters set up similar programs. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than five million Americans are currently living with the disease, so the audience is there, says Francesca Rosenberg, director of MoMA’s Community and Access Programs. “We’re delighted that we’ll be able to spread the program around the country.”

The grant will also pay for a study, with New York University’s School of Medicine, that will focus on how such programs as Meet Me at MoMA positively impact people with early-stage Alzheimer’s and their caregivers (who, Rosenberg says, are an equally important part of the picture). Researchers will also assess the importance of arts programs in health care. The results will be telling, Rosenberg says, as the impacts of the program—scientific or otherwise— have yet to be explored, largely because MoMA is one of the only museums offering tours specifically geared to people with Alzheimer’s. But even without study results, Rosenberg says, she believes Meet Me at MoMA enhances participants’ quality of life for many reasons.

“Because art can trigger emotional responses, and people have emotional memory, it can be a great outlet for people with Alzheimer’s,” she says. “Art also stimulates conversation—people tend to talk when they see a work of art. The program is designed as a forum for dialogue, and that really lends itself to people connecting socially and enjoying themselves. That’s why it works.”

Blumenfeld is focusing on connections as she leads a discussion on Puryear’s works, prompting members of the group to talk about what they see in each sculpture. The responses vary wildly. The shape of the artist’s towering cedar-and-rattan Brunhilde (1998–2000) reminds one man of the mosques of Iran, where he once lived. The title starts another man talking about opera. Others comment on the sculpture’s artistic merits. “Why don’t we just let the work speak for itself?” another asks.

Rosenberg says tour leaders deliberately choose artworks that spark these types of open-ended conversations. Pieces that have worked especially well in the past include figurative paintings, such as Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World (1948). “When there’s a clear figure like this one, of a woman in a field, it’s something almost everyone can look at and come to their own interpretations about,” she says. More-abstract works have also triggered discussions, such as Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942–43). “People can relate to the shapes and talk about the patterns and rhythm,” she says. “Some people also bring their own history into this, and they are able to tap into their longterm memory.”