Art on Hospital Walls Helps Healing

Addressing reporters on the sidewalk outside Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ apartment after her passing, JFK Jr. said his mother died the way she wanted—surrounded by her family, her friends and her books.

In her day, Onassis was a lover of literature and prominent book editor (DoubleDay). “If you produce one book, you will have done something wonderful with your life,” she once said. That she surrounded herself with her favorite works of literature when she was sick is no surprise.

Art comforts and heals. Artists and art lovers have believed this for eons, but now everyone else agrees. Research in the last two decades has confirmed art’s connection to healing, and hospitals everywhere are now including art in their hallways and patient rooms.

(Courtesy of Biography.com)

Old Concept, New Acceptance

According to Paintings in Hospitals, a UK-based organization that has been working to introduce art into healthcare since 1959, humans have understood the healing benefit of art since ancient times. The Greeks, for example, “believed that being in contact with statues and mosaics could heal the mind and body.”

But while initiatives have come and gone over the years (e.g., the Victorian Age tilework at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in England), it’s only in the last couple decades that we’ve taken a closer look at the relationship between art, emotion, the mind and healing—and done something about it.

In 1991, healthcare professionals told the New York Times that they recognized the need for “humanistic elements that reinforce personal feelings and expression” in the antiseptic, tech-heavy, fluorescent-lit atmosphere of hospitals.

“A hospital environment can be frightening and tense,” Dr. David Flinker of the Memorial Hospital of Burlington County told the Times. “Art does something for people. The gallery is a strategic place. Color, form and images on a daily basis can provide a conscious as well as subliminal lift…All of us have been transformed by the art.”

(Courtesy of Art Info)

Yet 1991 was still the beginning.

“We need to be able to prove through studies that hospital stays are shorter because of our program,” artist Pat Stefanini told the Times during that interview.

“We need to shift the paradigm from art as decoration to the true esthetic power of art,” added Janice Palmer of Duke University’s Cultural Services Program.

It looks like that’s happening.

Not Just Esthetics…Esthetic Power

“Today, a growing number of patients, health and social care professionals, researchers, policy makers, architects and planners recognize that the arts are integral to health,” reports Paintings In Hospitals.

According to HealingPhotoArt.org, patients overwhelmingly prefer art over white walls. They also prefer natural landscapes, animals, portraits and scenes of everyday life over urban landscapes and abstract art.

Overall, it’s about providing a comprehensive healing environment. And hospitals are now providing patients with that environment.

“These are not just accoutrements or esthetics anymore,” Dr. Lisa Harris of Eskenazi Health (Indiana University) told the Wall Street Journal last summer.

Harris isn’t kidding. She has commissioned 19 artists to supply Eskenazi with art that supports a “sense of optimism, vitality and energy.” With a budget of $1.5 million.

Bringing Nature In

Research in the last couple decades has illuminated the connection between the healing process and art. The research has given healthcare professionals every reason to hang art on their walls.

“With studies showing a direct link between the content of images and the brain’s reaction to pain, stress and anxiety,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “Hospitals are considering and choosing artworks based on the evidence and giving it a higher priority than merely decoration for sterile rooms and corridors.”

For Dr. Harris, “this is right down the fairway of what we need to be doing to promote health.”

Other healthcare professionals feel the same.

“The addition that [the art] has made on our walls is just amazing,” Dr. Luis Isola of Mount Sinai told NPR.

Isola works in the bone marrow transplant unit, which was a stark place where sterility trumped everything else, according to NPR. The art has changed that.

“This is real art,” said Isola. “This is beautiful stuff. This is like bringing nature into the ward.”

Just like Jackie Kennedy brought literature into her ward.