Hospital Curator

Nobody would ever confuse Duke Hospital for a museum, but the amount of art hanging there could fill one.

For more than 20 years, Janice Palmer and the Medical Center Cultural Services office have filled empty spaces in the hospital, patients' rooms, cafeterias and hallways, with art meant both to stimulate thought and improve the well-being of the patients and employees.

The office stands behind more than 2,000 works of original art now hanging in the hospital along with about 1,000 posters. It has turned to employees as well, offering them opportunities to be creative through poetry contests, art shows and to see and hear musical and dramatic performances in the workplace.

"Looking back on the things that we've done, I see three reasons why it works," Palmer said. "It brings beauty into the workplace. That's important anywhere, but it's particularly important with a population under different kinds of stress: patients worried about their health, family members worried about patients, and caregivers responsible for it all.

"Art also helps celebrate community. We see the Cultural Services office as an arts council for a small town. People need celebration, and through art we bring that aspect to the various populations of the hospital.

"And art can touch the spirit. It is part of the emotional language we use. It's fulfilling to be surrounded by that."

After joining the office as director in 1978, Palmer stepped down in December, but she's not leaving the work behind. She has a new responsibility for working with Medical Center Development to build a $2 million endowment to support the office's work.

The office now functions as part of Hospital Education, directed by Alice Cooper.

Palmer came to Duke from the Durham Arts Council. The Cultural Services office had just been established primarily through the efforts of Dr. Jim Semans. Semans was interested in the positive effects arts could have on health care, and in 1977, he brought in a New York musician, Jere Ferrah, to Duke to determine the feasibility of such a program here.

Ferrah's early efforts were a hit, and after he returned to New York, a 1977 National Endowment of the Arts grant laid the foundation for the new office. Palmer, who is wife of Duke chemistry professor Richard Palmer, had a background in arts education and jumped at the opportunity.

"It was an adventuresome time," she recalled in an interview this week. "We tried a lot of things." Many of the office's current projects started in those early years. The Osler Literary Roundtable brings literature fans together weekly to discuss prose and poetry. The annual art show gives employees opportunity to display their paintings, crafts, drawings and other works.

Work with patients also took off. One project has bone marrow transplant patients keep a journal of their time at the hospital. Others work with pediatric patients to help them express themselves and their concerns through art. Musicians bring music to patients' rooms.

The effect of arts on patient healing is a difficult one to access, but Palmer says there are signs that the positive influence does exist. She cites one study done using college students. The students were given portraits of people's faces and then asked their perceptions of the people in the photographs. One group of students were placed in an aesthetically pleasing room, another in an ugly room and a third in a neutral one.

"Across the board, the students in the beautiful room perceived the faces more positively than did the students in the ugly or neutral rooms," Palmer said. "I think it's an interesting study because it makes the direct connection between art and our inner emotions."

She said patients certainly notice the art. "I remember the daughter of one patient telling me it made all the difference having a piece of original art in her father's room rather than a poster. Because of the nature of the energy in an original work of art and because an institution cared enough to select it [rather than a poster], it was an expression that the institution cared about what was happening to her father.

"We deliberately put up different kinds of art throughout the hospital," Palmer said. "In patients' rooms we generally use landscapes. If its an abstract work, we want it to be gentle, although we always strive to get the highest aesthetics in these works.

"But in the public areas, we've tried to get a lot of different kinds of work: abstract, portraits, landscapes, works that are demanding and those that are less demanding. Some art we want just to be funny.

"One of my favorite places is the hallway linking the hospital to the Eye Center. They have all these original posters from the American Dance Festival lined up. It's wonderful seeing them together and each is beautiful in its own right."

Some of the art has its critics, Palmer said with a laugh. She recalled one time cleaning a work and having a woman come up to her about the work. "She told me, 'I don't know why you hung that painting. I've been looking at that painting for weeks, and I just don't understand it. I look at it everyday, but I still can't figure it out.'

"And I thought to myself, 'Gotcha.' The painting got her attention and she returned to it. My feeling is if there is no mystery in art, it's just wallpaper. If it has mystery and draws you back into the work, then it's art.

"I believe seeing original art is one of the privileges of working in this day and age. It can be so enriching to see how artists have put so much energy into something trying to see how it works. Being around that can improve our lives."

One recent initiative of the office is actually an old one. It has launched an effort to use art to focus attention on the different ethnic cultures that are part of the hospital. Recently, the office unveiled a new work by a local Hispanic artist; in the near future, it will show art from the Asian, Indian, African American and other cultures.

"We have all along tried to bring multiculturalism into our work because its part of the arts, and an enriching part of the arts," Palmer said. "We didn't just want to show black artists during Black History Month but throughout the collection throughout the year. The same holds for music and literature. People are becoming more aware of the scope of the various cultures here, and we thought that we had a good opportunity to participate in that process."

Palmer is looking forward to working on the endowment. She said she is aware of the tight financial times that affects hospital budgets, and she believes the endowment is the best way to ensure a secure base for the program.

"Duncan Yaggy (medical center chief planning officer) once told me the only way people would realize all the things we do is if you took us out. That doesn't have to happen. We want to be able to continue to provide the services we do to patients and employees alike. We would like the arts program to be able to move forward."