4 • THE CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY
NOVEMBER 4, 2010
THE FACE OF PHILANTHROPY
Harnessing the Power
of Art to Heal Patients
in Somber Settings
TEN YEARS AGO Diane Brown lay in a CT scan machine, scared by her sterile surroundings and by what doctors might find in her body.
Then Ms. Brown closed her eyes and found comfort
by imagining an artwork by Matthew Ritchie creeping up the white walls and onto the ceiling.
“I wanted to get out of there, and the only way I
could was through my imagination,” says Ms. Brown,
now 62. “After I was done I thought, I would like to
do this for real—put museum-quality art into hospi-
tals.”
Today Ms. Brown, a former contemporary-art deal-
er, is healthy and so is her nonprofit group, RxArt,
in New York. In the past decade the group has com-
pleted 18 art projects in health-care facilities around
the country.
When children arrive for a CT scan at Advocate
Hope Children’s Hospital, in Oak Lawn, Ill., they
find four huge monkey faces smiling at them from
the front of the blue-painted machine. Giant images of a purple heart and red balloon dog, as well as
a portrait of a donkey, adorn the room’s candy-col-ored walls. The lighthearted, vibrant images come
from the pop artist Jeff Koons, a megastar in the art
world. He waived his artist’s fee for the $25,000 project, paid for by Kiehl’s, a cosmetics company. Now
the hospital and RxArt hope to raise the same sum
for Mr. Koons to reinvent the dreary CT scan waiting
room.
“I don’t want to put something expected in a room,”
says Ms. Brown. “I want to put something that is
challenging in a positive way, something unfamiliar
so that the person who is in that room can examine
it, and that is time they are not really in the hospital
in their minds.”
While patients and their doctors eat in the caf-
eteria at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, in
Memphis, they are kept company by images of giant,
dreamy, gingerbread houses by Will Cotton and col-
orful pandas on a glittery surface by Rob Pruitt.
Delicate strands of grass and yellow, red, orange,
and purple wildflowers twist up the wall leading to
the bone-marrow-transplant unit at Mount Sinai
Hospital, in New York. The work, “Traveling Seeds,”
by Jason Middlebrook, offers a hopeful message in its
parallel between the plant and human worlds. “
Patients have received bone marrow from other people,
somewhat like seed pods floating from one destination to the next to spawn life,” Mr. Middlebrook has
said.
RxArt’s budget fluctuates between $300,000 and
$600,000, depending on money raised at its annual
party, which accounts for 80 percent of its revenue.
Foundations, corporations, and individuals have also
contributed or paid for specific projects. Supporters
can buy copies of two coloring books, which contain
images from artists including Andy Warhol and William Wegman, on the group’s Web site, which also
produces income. The books are distributed free in
health-care facilities where RxArt has placed work.
Ms. Brown, who runs the group with one full-time
staff member and two volunteers, says she keeps a
waiting list of organizations keen to participate in
the RxArt program. The process is collaborative—
Ms. Brown chooses the art together with doctors,
nurses, and other staff members. “If they are not on
board, it’s a catastrophe,” she says. “They live with
the art all day.”
Here, youngsters at St. Jude Children’s Research
Hospital, in Memphis, enjoy Will Cotton’s “Ginger-
bread House.” —NICOLE LEWIS
