University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics' pioneering vision of hospital art impacts healing

When my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, I spent a lot of time at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics (UIHC). There was chemo to shrink her tumors, surgery, an unexpected visit to the intensive care unit, stints in a rehab facility, then a month to heal before more rounds of chemo. One of the bright spots — besides the nursing staff and oncology surgeon Dr. David Bender — was the hospital art collection.

Art is a standard fixture in hospitals today, but few people realize that the movement to create hospital collections started at the University of Iowa. Based on the vision of then-hospital CEO John W. Colloton, the seeds of what became Project Art were sown in 1975 when he asked Joyce Summerwill to explore the idea of transforming the hospital's green hallways by using art to “expand the healing mission and to humanize the hospital experience.”