Inside, Looking Out
Sanatoriums and hospitals, like the one in Mount Morris, were semi-public spaces that received long-term loans from the Federal Art Project (FAP) as a form of treatment for tuberculosis patients. Before the development of antibiotics, a key aspect of nursing care was access to fresh air and isolation in a natural environment. For those hospitals in urban areas, or treating patients who were not in a condition to go outside, artwork was prescribed to evoke the sensation of being outdoors. Paintings like Arthur James Emery’s A Peaceful Valley or Cecil Chichester’s Spring Landscape provided a virtual window outside for patients. Artwork was discouraged from being overly stimulating. New York’s Superintendent of TB hospitals thought that “many of the more intense examples of so-called modern art should be avoided” (Plunkett).
As a result, nature was a common theme for paintings commissioned for the FAP; artistic subjects often depict landscapes, flowers, and animals. For example, Isabella Howland’s Still Life with Flowers illustrates the popularity of still lifes, with its bright color scheme and flowers being similarly uplifting. Surreal as it may sound, for tuberculous patients this was often the most accessible treatment. Beyond feeling closer to nature, the artwork created a mental bridge for patients to the outside world to prevent isolation. Everyday life and active bodies were another frequent visual. Carl Gustaf (Simon) Nelson’s Third Avenue El (1934) is a colorful glimpse of bustling people on a street, markedly different in its palatte and mood from Maurice Sieven’s City Landscape (c. 1935). Rural sanitoria isolated patients from their accustomed lives, but through art, the hope was for them to remain connected with the outside world—or rather, some imagined version of that. It’s most accurate to suggest that the FAP loaned art to become a psychological escape that offered patients a distraction from their declining health.
Works Consulted
-- Greenhalgh Isobel, and A.R. Butler. "Sanatoria Revisited: Sunlight and Health." Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh 47.3 (Sept 2017): 276-280. Link
-- Holzer, Harold. "Healing Walls: Health and Art in New Deal New York," Roosevelt House Public Policy Center (2022) Link
-- Kirby, Stephanie. “Sputum and the Scent of Wallflowers: Nursing in Tuberculosis Sanatoria, 1920–1970.” Social History of Medicine 23.3 (Dec. 2010): 602-620.
-- "WPA Art for Sanatoria." Bulletin of the National Tuberculosis Association 22.5 (1936): 75. Link