Solo Show
Perimeter Gallery, Chicago
Feb 10 – March 10, 2012
Revolution – special installation
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
Oct 2012
Essay by J. Susan Isaacs, Ph.D.
Curator, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts
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 Healing art: Path to the Lake. |
Soon, hospital patients may wake up from anesthesia to see images like Claude Monet's Argenteuil Basin or Ben Whitehouse's Path to the Lake. According to Dr. Roger Ulrich of Texas A&M University, patients who view art can recover more quickly, with lowered pain, anxiety, and blood pressure.
In a test, people exposed to nature scenes showing calm water fared better than average; those viewing abstract images did worse. Noting this, Chicago's newly reopened Northwestern Hospital displays pastoral scenes in its rooms.
In a similar program, the New York-based organization HEART: Center for Healing & Art is researching art's curative powers, with the goal of placing it in hospitals, including New York's Beth Israel and a few Harvard-affiliated ones. "Patients' hospital stays can be very grim and long-lasting. Often, the only thing patients can see is the ceiling and a big black machine coming toward them," says HEART director Maurice Tuchman, senior curator emeritus at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. "Anyone who doesn't understand the connection between the physical environment and the health of people has to go back to school."
--Nancy Brundin LaPonzina