As evidence<\/a> for culture\u2019s role in enhancing health and wellbeing continues to pile up, an increasing number of arts councils, cultural organisations and national health systems<\/a> are working together to provide opportunities for creative experiences. The Art Bridges Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to expanding access to American art by partnering with local museums across the US, has broadened its support to include hospital art curators.<\/p>\n Nurturing relationships in art and health<\/p>\n This summer\u2019s symposium, which brought together 19 curators working in hospitals across North America, reflects how Art Bridges is nurturing relationships between museums and other arts and health organisations throughout the US, even as its sister organisations build infrastructure and programmes meant to serve the cultural and healthcare needs of local communities in north-west Arkansas.<\/p>\n \u201cEventually, Art Bridges wants to play the role of partnering art museums and healthcare settings to create their own regionally specific programme,\u201d says Anne Kraybill, Art Bridges\u2019 chief executive.<\/p>\n Each year, the organisation hosts numerous convenings for museum workers, including those offering art and wellness programmes, but this was their first for hospital art curators. As they explored ways to support both their local healthcare systems through Crystal Bridges and museum curators working in medical settings nationally, the organisers started with two questions, Kraybill says: \u201cWhat does it mean to curate in these spaces? And what does it mean to develop an arts programme?\u201d<\/p>\n To prepare, members of the Art Bridges team travelled to Stanford University in the Bay Area, where they learned \u201cthe way that the curators think is just fundamentally different\u201d, Kraybill says.<\/p>\n Medical spaces are regulated by various public entities, says Connie Wolf, a consulting director for Stanford Health Care\u2019s arts programme. For example, she and her colleagues are limited by types of materials and how art sits in hallways according to width requirements, she says.<\/p>\n They also consider how people experience healthcare settings, anticipating their frames of mind and how they might navigate often confusing corridors. Wolf says they place art in key locations as a way of creating markers. \u201cBy placing art strategically, it creates a sense of place,\u201d Wolf says. \u201cWe think of it as wayfinding and place-making.\u201d<\/p>\n Hospital art curators also recognise that art\u2019s purposes vary depending on location. Art meant for passageways has a different sense of meaning and purpose than art in waiting rooms. \u201cIt\u2019s really different to be in a cancer centre with a life-threatening illness than it is to be in some place where you\u2019re going to get your leg set in a cast,\u201d says Susan Krane, a curator and consultant for strategic initiatives with Montage Health in Monterey, California.<\/p>\n Krane says she works with staff to learn how a space will be used. During her presentation at the Bentonville symposium, she shared her experiences working on Montage Health\u2019s Ohana Center for Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health, which opened in 2023. For that project, she teamed with the facility\u2019s clinical lead, Susan Swick, who listed ideas, such as resilience and mindfulness, that she thought were important. The selected works were also considered as \u201ctools for the clinicians to trigger conversations, or for the kids to think about\u201d, Krane says.<\/p>\n Ryan Patrick, a curator for arts in medicine at New York City Health and Hospitals\u2014the largest public health system in the US\u2014proposed the mantra \u201ccurating for health\u201d at the symposium. He said it is a guiding methodology for how he and his colleagues commission art and use their vast art collection of more than 8,000 works. Their model includes collaborating with researchers and co-designing spaces with patients and staff.<\/p>\n \u201cThe arts and medicine department is embedded in the quality and safety cabinet,\u201d says Larissa W. Trinder, who, as the department\u2019s assistant vice president, oversees Patrick\u2019s curatorial programmes. \u201cThat means that this department is held to the same kind of rigour and accountability that others are in the same space.\u201d<\/p>\n When Trinder arrived in her role, she and her team were thoughtful and used design principles but lacked a clear strategy, she says. That changed under the quality and safety cabinet, where they have created methodologies that allow them to deliver art while accessing a large database of information. As a result, they are gaining insights into how the arts can be part of solutions for addressing issues such as retention and loneliness.<\/p>\n Trinder also collaborates with researchers, including Nisha Sajnani, a professor at New York University\u2019s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development and a founding co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab<\/a>, which the World Health Organization launched in 2023. Trinder and Sajnani are working on the global Hospital Murals Evaluation<\/a> project, which is examining the impact of murals in healthcare organisations in Nigeria, Slovenia, the US and the UK. Healing for All<\/a>, a mural by the artist Ebony Bolt at a municipal hospital in the Bronx, was part of the study.<\/p>\n Growing scientific consensus<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we know that, statistically, people who are participating in the arts have better health outcomes, we have to think about access to the arts as a social determinant or driver of health,\u201d says Jill Sonke, a US cultural policy fellow at Stanford University and a research professor at the University of Florida. She adds that access to the arts should be thought of as a condition that generates health, much like access to good food, transportation and housing.<\/p>\n
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