Putting Hospitable back into Hospitals

Saturday Danyele, Diana, and I walked down Beacon Street to see the hospital district, galvanized by talk about implementing patient-made art installations. We first walked into Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, drawn in by the elegant lobby we could see behind enormous floor-to-ceiling windows. The building was beautiful, and we began taking pointers from the interior design; we were trying to distill by observation what exactly made the space work so well, because we agreed that it did work very well. The natural earth tones of browns and creams were complimented by pops of bright reds, dark greens, and subtle blues. Forms of abstracted flowers gave the furniture that was composed of soft curving lines curving lines a an natural character, as though they were objects of natural instead of man-made origin. More floor-to-ceiling windows allowed a lot of natural light to illuminate the space, and what artificial light there was was emitted by soft, white-light bulbs, a welcome difference from the harsh orange fluorescent light that one usually encounters in hospitals. Overall, the "au natural" motif of the interior design helped to combat the sterile artificial aesthetic that many hospitals are forced to adopt because of the technical nature of the healing arts. As we walked through Dana-Farber, we noticed many spaces that could be very easily converted to places where patient-made art is exhibited. Many of the walls were already hung with art, but art (not very good, in my opinion) done by professionals. Other spaces practically begged for adornment and were left bare. After taking pictures and looking around the Institute, we went to the information desk to try and find ways to make contact, and ended up leaving with several promising fliers about patient artwork seminars being conducted by the MFA and other art-related organizations. After Dana-Farber, we visited Beth Israel Medical Center's East Campus, which was much less well endowed. We only walked around the lobby, but what we saw was promising. We were immediately filled with ideas about how to address the clumsy mix-and-match aesthetic we saw with patient-oriented art, which would fit right in with Beth Israel's current "Human First" add campaign.

This is one of the sights in Dana-Farber that is asking for patient art.  Behind it is the Dana-Farber patient information center, which makes it an ideal location.

This wall, opposite pictures, could be better used for patient art as well.

This space is directly in front of a cafeteria in Dana-Farber. The wasted wall could be utilized by a patient-made mural. There are several large sized, framed artworks hanging in the cafeteria (one can just be seen in the right of the picture, in the background), so placing one here would not stick out in the slightest.

The blank wall to the left of this staircase leads to a main artery of the Feldberg Building. Some attempt at all could be made to liven it up, and we believed that a few well-chosen patient works could do just the trick

Are they really "human first"? A cool way to demonstrate this could be to collage patient pieces around the ads. Danyele, Diana and I also came up with the idea of having some patients paint ceiling tiles to bring some color to this drab, clumsily interior-designed hallway.