Recap: Hospitals add art to lift spirits, Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

A sculpture of a dancing couple enlivens the U-M cardiovascular center.

According to Detroit Free Press, art is transforming drab, lifeless health care and workplace spaces into healing environments filled with beauty, sophistication and joy, and the trend has brought national attention to leaders like the University of Michigan and Detroit Receiving Hospital.

All over the state, art pieces are being added to patient rooms, corridors, elevators and courtyards.But at a time of a depressed state economy and greater accountability of expenditures, health organizations say they are careful that spending on art remains in check, mostly derived from donations.

"We certainly haven't taken money out of operations," said Dr. Scott Dulchavsky, chairman of surgery at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital, which is leading the health system's effort to expand its use of art in its hospitals.

Detroit Receiving's 900-piece collection is valued at $3 million, according to "The Healing Work of Art: From the Collection of Detroit Receiving Hospital," published last fall (Detroit Receiving Hospital, $45). It includes Asian and South African textiles, African masks and beadwork, several four-story outdoor sculptures, quilts, mobiles and tiles.

Gifts of Art on the job

U-M's extensive art program fills eight galleries with changing exhibits every two months.

It also has an art cart program, a lending library of framed poster art for patients' rooms. Another project created a 16-foot dragon display from 1,700 placemats by patients with pictures and encouraging words. Students of art professor Anne Mondro cut, folded and assembled the dragon project.

Another project is turning artwork of pediatric patients into tiles to be installed as patient tributes and directional signs in U-M's Women's and Children's Hospital, now under construction.

"Hospitals of the past have been pretty bereft and frightening," said Elaine Sims, director of U-M's Gifts of Art program. "But I always say art here has a job to do. It can't just be pretty. Art has to have value and power in a healthcare setting."

The pieces she has amassed range from whimsical beaded loons to elaborate textile hangings.

Some are for sale. Some artists have sold their entire exhibit, said Sims, a leader, founding member and past president of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., organization founded in 1991 (www.thesah.org).

She plans an appraisal soon of the U-M collection, derived mostly from donations and small contributions from construction projects. The funding idea led Ann Arbor to adopt an ordinance last year that is to seek a 1% contribution of construction costs to art projects in the city. The concept is known as Percent for Art, now active in more than 400 communities.

Artist alumna at work

Grateful patients also donate many art pieces, like a painting now under commission from Saginaw artist Susie McColgan for U-M.

David Ebelt of Saginaw asked McColgan to do the painting after Ebelt successfully under went bladder cancer surgery in September 2005 at U-M. He spent his days at the hospital walking the corridors viewing the artwork, before returning to his single room overlooking a helicopter launching pad.

"All things considered we had a decent experience there," said Ebelt. "The care was outstanding. We wanted to give something back."

McColgan said she is creating a painting that "will put you in a happy, warm space. I want to help patients have that little pause in their day, to feel some peace."

U-M interviews artists and previews their work before accepting donations. Sims was so impressed with McColgan's vibrant murals and paintings that she offered her a chance to display some of the artist's work.

A U-M art school graduate and mother of freshman football player John McColgan, she created seven large paintings of top players in the school's history, as well as three of this year's seniors and retiring coach Lloyd Carr.

The paintings were hung Friday in a prominent spot in the U-M Hospital lobby. They will be on display through April 18. Her work also has been displayed or is a permanent part of hospitals in Saginaw, Flint and Kalamazoo.

Some hospital artwork comes from staff. U-M Hospital currently displays a collection of paper snowflake designs by Dr. Thomas Clark, a retired U-M physician. Albino Cicerone, a Ford maintenance worker and craftsman, designed an elaborate tile wall fountain with Pewabic Pottery tiles.

Coaxing donors to give

One of the nation's more extensive hospital art collections was assembled by Huntington Woods art patron Irene Walt at Detroit Receiving, where her late husband, Alexander, was for many years the hospital's chief surgeon.

After the Detroit riot in 1967, she formed a committee of civic leaders who sought donations from women's groups at all three Detroit-based automakers along with foundations and men's and women's clubs in the region.

Walt and her volunteers also asked for donations from doctors who had worked at Receiving's predecessor institution, Detroit General Hospital. Brewery czar Peter Stroh donated 150 cases of historic green Pewabic Pottery tiles that had been commissioned for the beer company's Detroit plant but sat in storage for decades.

When Detroit Receiving opened a new hospital in 1982, architect Ronald Kessler donated several pieces to the hospital. Detroit's late Mayor Coleman Young and former WSU president George Gullen also coaxed donations for the new hospital, Walt said. In the end, she got paintings for every patient room at Receiving, plus large sculptures for eight courtyards.

"After all these years, I'm known in hospitals as the art lady," Walt said. She's busy developing more art for the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit and helping Dulchavsky develop Henry Ford's art collection.

Dulchavsky, a former Detroit Receiving surgeon, is working with Birmingham and West Bloomfield art leaders to collect pieces to display at Henry Ford's new hospital opening next year in West Bloomfield.

In his four years at Henry Ford, Dulchavsky and others have collected 75 pieces "scattered around the hospital" in Detroit that he estimates are worth $250,000.

"Art helps a person refocus on getting out of the hospital and on the joys of wellness," Dulchavsky said. "It's also important to taking care of all of us, the employees. These are high-intensity areas, so we want people to take pride in their workplace."