BEAUTIFUL MEDICINE
Hospitals exist to heal our bodies, but how many of them also feed our souls? LA’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center does both. Instead of hallways dotted with mass-produced pastoral scenes or sickly colored walls, visitors are greeted with thousands of vibrant works by the most important names in contemporary art, such as Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Claes Oldenburg, and Pablo Picasso. Each one of the pieces in the Cedars-Sinai collection is an artist original.
The hospital’s foray into modern art began in 1966, after Los Angeles businessman and art enthusiast Frederick R. Weisman was admitted with a head injury that severely compromised his memory. His wife, art collector Marcia Simon Weisman, began bringing in pieces from the couple’s art collection to help stimulate her husband’s recollections. It worked, with a bit of bittersweet irony: her husband remembered Jackson Pollock’s name before her own! As John T. Lange, curator of the Cedars-Sinai art collection, recounts on the hospital’s website, "There was an obvious relationship between the art and his recovery." And Marcia Weisman’s passion for filling the hospital with art was born.
(Photo Courtesy Cedar-Sinai; Marcia Simon Weisman by Andy Warhol Seriagraph, 1975 )
The Weismans began by donating 100 works of art from their collection (including an Andy Warhol portrait of each of them). Then, Marcia raised a wave of donations from her contacts in the art community. As donations continued to pour in from private art collectors and grateful hospital patients, the Cedars-Sinai collection grew to an astonishing 4,000 pieces.
Today, more than two decades after Marcia’s death, the donations continue. An Arts Advisory Committee selects pieces appropriate for a hospital setting, while other pieces are auctioned at hospital fund-raisers.
In an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning With Charles Osgood,” Lange said, “We’re trying to create an environment conducive to healing.” There is growing evidence to suggest that art does just that. In Sweden, a study found that when older patients were exposed to art, “an improvement was seen in the subjects’ medical health status.” In a UK study, patients who experienced visual art and music during treatment required shorter hospital stays and less pain medication. In the U.S., the National Institute of Health states, “Many scientists agree that the arts can help reduce stress and anxiety, improve well-being and enhance the way we fight infection.”
(Photo Courtesy Cedar-Sinai; Ice Bag Scale B by Claes Oldenburg's Kinetic Sculpture, 1971)
There is also, of course, evidence from patients themselves. The Charles Osgood segment featured a woman who had been hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai for two months as the result of Addison’s Disease. She shared how the photos on display of President Kennedy, who suffered from the same disease, both comforted her and gave her a moment’s respite from her surroundings.
“I imagine what he's thinking, by just his expressions,” she said. “That completely took me out of all of this for that moment. And that, to me, is a process of healing.”
Visit the Cedars-Sinai site to learn more about the art collection, or click to view the CBS feature.
