The Victoria and Albert's (V&A) latest exhibition, Story and Tradition in Contemporary Printmaking, is not at its Cromwell Road headquarters, or at one of its partner museums around the country. It's not even in a museum. Ten prints from the V&A's collection are currently hanging on the walls of a corridor at Hackney's Homerton University Hospital in east London.
The museum and the hospital were brought together by Paintings in Hospitals (PiH), a national charity established in 1959 to promote the visual arts in healthcare. With 4,000 original works of art in its collections, PiH has traditionally loaned artworks to hospitals across the country in return for a small annual fee.
More recently, using its knowledge of the logistics involved in displaying art in hospitals, it has also acted as a broker between hospitals and other collections.
Its new role as a broker may be partly because of changing attitudes towards the importance of environment in healthcare. Few people would dispute the palliative qualities of music or art, but recent studies have provided solid evidence.
A report - A Study of the Effects of Visual and Performing Arts in Health Care - compiled at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital from 1999 to 2002, found that patients in the day surgery unit who were exposed to visual arts and live music before an operation had significantly lower blood pressure and heart rate compared with a group who had not been exposed. It said that their levels of cortisol (a hormone related to stress) were reduced as well. The report found that the environment also influenced staff to apply for jobs in the hospital.
Homerton emphasises the importance of visual art. The hospital has a collection of some 600 works, mainly donated by local artists, and 3,000 works by patients. Visitors to the hospital are confronted by sculptures, friezes and colourful paintings along every corridor and in every stairwell. The hospital also has its own art curator, Shaun Caton, and an enthusiastic art committee.
Caton has organised several exhibitions at the hospital including a collaboration that saw part of the British Library's photographic collection on display. The hospital has also had one-off loans from Tate Britain and Tate Modern. But this is the first time it has been involved with the V&A. Caton is clearly delighted and enthuses about the V&A's 'vast and interesting' collections.
But delivering the exhibition, which ends on 14 December, was no easy task. It is the result of a year of negotiations between the museum, PiH and the hospital. The V&A made several site visits to inspect the proposed space and the result is a three-way contract setting out exactly what is expected from each organisation, and appropriate insurance cover.
The insurance cover is important because the busy nature of working hospitals means that works can be damaged. However, Helen Bonar, the senior curator at PiH, stresses that of the several thousand works that PiH lends each year, there are usually no more than two or three accidents, and these are generally no more serious than 'a scrape on a frame'.
She says because PiH has a good knowledge of the hospitals that it lends works to, it can make sure that loaned works are placed in quiet corridors, where there is no danger of a food trolley banging into them.
Catherine Flood, the curator of prints at the V&A, describes the loan to the Homerton as a 'calculated risk'. But the museum has imposed its own restrictions. All the works are secured with security screws and fittings that have been painted over. The corridor is monitored by 24-hour CCTV, and the exhibition can only last for four months because of concerns about the prints fading if exposed to the glare of the hospital corridor lights for too long.
'When we agreed to this exhibition, we had to accept that we would go way over our normal light level,' says Flood. 'After the show, we will put everything into storage for 18 months.'
The ten prints on display are mainly new acquisitions, 'generally contemporary and quite robust', she says. Some of them are being displayed for the first time. This is partly because of the conservation issues involved in displaying older works but they were also chosen 'because they are doing something new - they are not just pretty pictures'.
Caton has curated the hospital's collection for more than 11 years and has a good idea of what patients like. 'We do consult with staff and patients, especially where children and elderly people are concerned. It's important to get a balance and find out what they want.'
But Caton is determined that the art should be thought-provoking. He says that one of the V&A prints featuring an erect penis has caused 'a few comments', while a previous exhibition that included photographs of insects triggered a vociferous debate led by one particularly arachnophobic staff member.
Nick Hall, a unit administrator for the Regional Neurological Rehabilitation Unit (RNRU) at the Homerton, prefers works that are 'provoking and cause discussion', although he thinks that having art in the hospital is a good thing generally. 'It makes the place less frightening for patients, and it's a talking point for staff, especially if they don't like something.'
Marilyn Petridean, a 27-year-old patient being treated in the RNRU, agrees: 'I like art because it says so much without using words. The hospital would be more depressing without it.' Of the works in the V&A exhibition, she particularly likes the minimal two-colour prints of Timur Novikov, but finds an etching by Boris Zabirokhin 'too busy'.
The benefits for the hospital are clear, but what's in it for the V&A? A clue may lie in its Strategy for Access, Inclusion and Diversity, which reads: 'The emphasis here is on removing physical and sensory, intellectual, cultural, attitudinal and financial barriers to the V&A's collections, knowledge and expertise thus broadening the V&A's audiences, particularly those under-served by the V&A, eg people with disabilities; socio-economic classes C2, D, E; culturally diverse communities.'
If people go to the V&A as a result of the exhibition, then that's all to the good, says Flood, but this is 'not just about us getting objects out there, but getting people's reactions to them'. There is a sealed box at the entrance to the exhibition for people's comments, which the V&A hopes to publish on its website.
The exhibition has met with approval from the Museums Association (MA), which, in its Collections for the Future report, singled out 'loan schemes and displays on non-museum premises' as something museums needed to do more of.
Helen Wilkinson, the policy officer at the MA, says it would like to see more schemes like this because 'people interact with objects in many different ways, and by giving people the opportunity to encounter objects in entirely different settings, we open up the possibilities for museum collections'.
The MA may not have to wait long. Although the V&A is the first national museum that PiH has worked with, Stuart Davie, the director of PiH, says he is 'keen to work with other national collections'. According to Flood, the V&A has other ideas already, and Caton is planning an exhibition of 19th-century photographs of children in Hackney, for which he would like to involve the V&A's Museum of Childhood.
Patrick Steel is the website editor at the Museums Association
www.paintingsinhospitals.org.uk
www.homerton.nhs.uk
www.vam.ac.uk
The museum and the hospital were brought together by Paintings in Hospitals (PiH), a national charity established in 1959 to promote the visual arts in healthcare. With 4,000 original works of art in its collections, PiH has traditionally loaned artworks to hospitals across the country in return for a small annual fee.
More recently, using its knowledge of the logistics involved in displaying art in hospitals, it has also acted as a broker between hospitals and other collections.
Its new role as a broker may be partly because of changing attitudes towards the importance of environment in healthcare. Few people would dispute the palliative qualities of music or art, but recent studies have provided solid evidence.
A report - A Study of the Effects of Visual and Performing Arts in Health Care - compiled at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital from 1999 to 2002, found that patients in the day surgery unit who were exposed to visual arts and live music before an operation had significantly lower blood pressure and heart rate compared with a group who had not been exposed. It said that their levels of cortisol (a hormone related to stress) were reduced as well. The report found that the environment also influenced staff to apply for jobs in the hospital.
Homerton emphasises the importance of visual art. The hospital has a collection of some 600 works, mainly donated by local artists, and 3,000 works by patients. Visitors to the hospital are confronted by sculptures, friezes and colourful paintings along every corridor and in every stairwell. The hospital also has its own art curator, Shaun Caton, and an enthusiastic art committee.
Caton has organised several exhibitions at the hospital including a collaboration that saw part of the British Library's photographic collection on display. The hospital has also had one-off loans from Tate Britain and Tate Modern. But this is the first time it has been involved with the V&A. Caton is clearly delighted and enthuses about the V&A's 'vast and interesting' collections.
But delivering the exhibition, which ends on 14 December, was no easy task. It is the result of a year of negotiations between the museum, PiH and the hospital. The V&A made several site visits to inspect the proposed space and the result is a three-way contract setting out exactly what is expected from each organisation, and appropriate insurance cover.
The insurance cover is important because the busy nature of working hospitals means that works can be damaged. However, Helen Bonar, the senior curator at PiH, stresses that of the several thousand works that PiH lends each year, there are usually no more than two or three accidents, and these are generally no more serious than 'a scrape on a frame'.
She says because PiH has a good knowledge of the hospitals that it lends works to, it can make sure that loaned works are placed in quiet corridors, where there is no danger of a food trolley banging into them.
Catherine Flood, the curator of prints at the V&A, describes the loan to the Homerton as a 'calculated risk'. But the museum has imposed its own restrictions. All the works are secured with security screws and fittings that have been painted over. The corridor is monitored by 24-hour CCTV, and the exhibition can only last for four months because of concerns about the prints fading if exposed to the glare of the hospital corridor lights for too long.
'When we agreed to this exhibition, we had to accept that we would go way over our normal light level,' says Flood. 'After the show, we will put everything into storage for 18 months.'
The ten prints on display are mainly new acquisitions, 'generally contemporary and quite robust', she says. Some of them are being displayed for the first time. This is partly because of the conservation issues involved in displaying older works but they were also chosen 'because they are doing something new - they are not just pretty pictures'.
Caton has curated the hospital's collection for more than 11 years and has a good idea of what patients like. 'We do consult with staff and patients, especially where children and elderly people are concerned. It's important to get a balance and find out what they want.'
But Caton is determined that the art should be thought-provoking. He says that one of the V&A prints featuring an erect penis has caused 'a few comments', while a previous exhibition that included photographs of insects triggered a vociferous debate led by one particularly arachnophobic staff member.
Nick Hall, a unit administrator for the Regional Neurological Rehabilitation Unit (RNRU) at the Homerton, prefers works that are 'provoking and cause discussion', although he thinks that having art in the hospital is a good thing generally. 'It makes the place less frightening for patients, and it's a talking point for staff, especially if they don't like something.'
Marilyn Petridean, a 27-year-old patient being treated in the RNRU, agrees: 'I like art because it says so much without using words. The hospital would be more depressing without it.' Of the works in the V&A exhibition, she particularly likes the minimal two-colour prints of Timur Novikov, but finds an etching by Boris Zabirokhin 'too busy'.
The benefits for the hospital are clear, but what's in it for the V&A? A clue may lie in its Strategy for Access, Inclusion and Diversity, which reads: 'The emphasis here is on removing physical and sensory, intellectual, cultural, attitudinal and financial barriers to the V&A's collections, knowledge and expertise thus broadening the V&A's audiences, particularly those under-served by the V&A, eg people with disabilities; socio-economic classes C2, D, E; culturally diverse communities.'
If people go to the V&A as a result of the exhibition, then that's all to the good, says Flood, but this is 'not just about us getting objects out there, but getting people's reactions to them'. There is a sealed box at the entrance to the exhibition for people's comments, which the V&A hopes to publish on its website.
The exhibition has met with approval from the Museums Association (MA), which, in its Collections for the Future report, singled out 'loan schemes and displays on non-museum premises' as something museums needed to do more of.
Helen Wilkinson, the policy officer at the MA, says it would like to see more schemes like this because 'people interact with objects in many different ways, and by giving people the opportunity to encounter objects in entirely different settings, we open up the possibilities for museum collections'.
The MA may not have to wait long. Although the V&A is the first national museum that PiH has worked with, Stuart Davie, the director of PiH, says he is 'keen to work with other national collections'. According to Flood, the V&A has other ideas already, and Caton is planning an exhibition of 19th-century photographs of children in Hackney, for which he would like to involve the V&A's Museum of Childhood.
Patrick Steel is the website editor at the Museums Association
www.paintingsinhospitals.org.uk
www.homerton.nhs.uk
www.vam.ac.uk
