The medical world is gradually realizing that the quality of the environment in hospitals may play a significant role in the process of recovery from illness.
In Britain, in order to bring art out of the galleries and into public places, some of the country’s most talented mists have been called in to transform older hospitals and to soften the hard edges of modern buildings. Now, almost 100 of the 2,500 National Health Service hospitals in Britain have significant collections of contemporary art in corridors, waiting areas and treatment rooms.
These recent initiatives owe a great deal to one artist, Peter Senior, who set up his studio at a Manchester hospital in northeastern England during the early 1970s. He felt the artist had lost his place in modern society, and that art should be enjoyed by a wider audience.
A typical hospital waiting room might have as many as 500 visitors each week. What better place to hold regular exhibitions of art? Peter held the first exhibition of his own paintings in the out-patients waiting area of the Manchester Royal Hospital in 1975. Believed to be Britain’s first hospital artist, Peter was so much in demand that he was soon joined by a team of six young art school graduates.
The effect is striking. Now, in the corridors and waiting rooms, the visitor experiences a full view of fresh colors, playful images and restful courtyards.
The quality of the environment may reduce the need for expensive drugs when a patient is recovering from an illness. A study has shown that, compared with patients who had no pleasant view or only a brick wall to look at, patients who had a view onto a garden needed half the number of strong pain killers.