Art in Hospitals, Healthcare Environments, and Identity

I have now visited several private and public hospitals, healthcare centres in New York looking at the role of art, culture and nature within their environments.

I have found that each space has geographical, cultural, or historic elements within their artworks providing familiarity, helping to create a sense of place – something a person can identify with.

Hospitals and healthcare centres are a unique environment with their own culture which can be unsettling and non-relatable; seeing familiar elements within an environment can help provide comfort and a sense of belonging.

Within both Memorial Sloan Kettering Centre for Cancer Care and NYU Langone Health, New York is the theme for their artworks, from the quirky ‘Spot’ sculpture with its New York Taxi to a Central Park themed mural displaying the birds you can find in the park.

A visual link to the city through floor to ceiling windows to cityscapes and river views can function in the same way as displaying New York themed artworks – an instant familiar view.

NYC Health + Hospital has strong links to heritage and culture. I visited WPA murals at Bellevue, Queens and Harlem hospitals.

The theme for the modernisation program of Harlem Hospital “respecting the past embracing the future” was based around the murals, in particular the 8-pannel, Vertis C. Hayes, entitled ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ 1937 (“…traces the African diaspora from 18^th – century African village life to slavery in America to 20^th – century freedom; from agrarian struggles in the South to professional success in the industrialised North” (New York Times) and adorns the frontage of the hospital along with the originals displayed in the Mural Pavilion.