On art in hospitals

When I walk around a medical facility, the art is one of those things I now notice.

That noticing has everything to do with a former colleague of mine, an interior designer, whose scope of work on projects sometimes included “the art package.”

“So…you get to pick the art?”

“When they let me. A lot of clients insist on picking the art themselves.” She made a face. “And they’re not very good at it.”

I asked for no explanation, but I did file this away as a curiosity—the art package. What did it mean to be bad at picking out art? Wasn’t it all a matter of taste?

Not long afterward, I was helping another colleague with a blog post on the use of art in medical facilities.

She explained that you had to consider the possible associations that might surface in the minds of patients. You couldn’t just pick stuff you thought was cool.

And there’s research, it turns out, backing this decision-making—evidence for the positive health benefits of art that depicts nature or natural motifs, for instance—though I’m not so much interested in the specific choices so much as the fact that choices exist, that “art packages” are something we do, and that there’s an art (or science) to picking out art.

In walking around a hospital the past few days, I’ve been looking at the art, wondering at the choices that were made in the background that put these pieces on the walls.

Photos of ripped men holding small babies?

Abstract oil paintings, Monet-style, of vaguely mountainous forms?

A massive mural of children playing in a pool?

What’s odd is that the art was chosen with intent to either create wanted associations or avoid unwanted ones.

So what do I associate with this bare-chested, six-packed father curling a newborn like a dumbbell?

I feel out of shape, sure, and maybe a little envious.

But mostly, I feel weird. This photo is weird.

And what interior designer would want me to feel that way?