It is 150 years since Florence Nightingale lit upon a brilliant observation about the power of images. The tireless healer scribbled in her Notes on Nursing in 1859 that “the variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients have a physical effect and are actual means of recovery”. A century and a half on hospitals are, by medical and technological standards, worlds apart from those that Nightingale would have known.
In terms of “variety of form”, however, very little has changed. She would probably feel quite at home marching between the anaemic walls in most of today’s wards.
But one charity, which has spent decades quietly shuffling artworks into busy hospitals, is beginning to change this.
Paintings in Hospitals, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this week, is devoted to reforming the health system’s attitude towards the benefits of exhibiting art. They loan works from their collection of over 4,800 pieces to hospitals and hospices around the country, and organise a yearly artists’ residency programme in a hospital ward.
Their task is vast, and routinely comes up against the debate: if a hospital has money to spend, wouldn’t it be better spent on life-saving equipment than on pretty pictures? However, against the odds, and with the staunch backing of an impressive team of supporters (big names in the art world contribute regularly to their fundraising auctions, and the Prince of Wales visited their collection at the military hospital Selly Oak in Birmingham on Tuesday to show his support) the charity has survived, and is beginning to see remarkable signs of its influence spreading.
Director Stuart Davie says: “Some hospitals have begun to return the works we’ve loaned them, because they’ve been able to start collecting for and curating their own spaces. In 10 years many more hospitals will be fostering their own art departments.”
The secret to the charity’s success lies in their elegant and considered collection, so if you’re thinking “Oh, I bet it’s all pansies, bears and balloons”, then you’re wrong. Their market-friendly collection includes works by Mary Fedden, Bridget Riley, and Richard Long, and they’ve even received a generous contribution of contemporary art from Charles Saatchi.
“Hospitals should think of the art as an investment,” says Davie. “Research shows that there is, on average, a one-day reduction in the length of stay when patients are exposed to art simply because it makes them – and their staff – feel better.”
The research he mentions was conducted at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital between 1998 and 2002, and it did produce some extraordinary findings about how images alleviate pain; the duration of labour, for example, was on average 2.1 hours shorter when women gave birth in front of a decorative artwork that distracted attention from the medical equipment in the delivery room.
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, with its own collection of more than 1,000 art objects, is the queen bee of artistic hospitals – “our goal is to make other organisations like theirs,” says Davie. The airy open space in the centre of the hospital, with tall sculptures, a water feature, a tapestry and colourful murals that span three storeys, is so uplifting – particularly during their weekly live Thursday lunchtime concerts – that you feel you could fly a kite. Only small giveaway signs reveal that it’s a hospital: a man combs his wife’s hair, half the listeners are wearing slippers.
Greta Trevers, who was recently discharged from the hospital, comes back for regular check-ups, and stays for afternoon tea in the hospital café next to The Acrobat, a colossal piece of curved profiled steel by Allen Jones, thought to be the largest indoor sculpture in Europe. “I always sit here because I love seeing children’s eyes light up as they walk past it,” she says.
She knows the hospital’s entire collection by heart, from the Paolozzi prints, the mobile of fish at the top of the building, and the jewel in the crown: Veronese’s Renaissance masterpiece The Resurrection, which adorns the hospital chapel.
“When I stayed in here I would visit a different floor every day, just to see the art,” says Trevers.
The real reward of the work of the charity is in the story-telling and the small interactions that offer moments of escapism. If it can in any way alleviate the loneliness of a Christmas spent in a hospital ward, at least for some patients and staff, it’s got to be worth its weight in gold.
Tags: articles donation, blog, forum, indina art ideas, news, paintings
