Despite the digital world readily available at our fingertips, many readers can still relate to the experience of sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room and being drawn to some peculiar characteristic within this banal setting—a discrepancy in the wall paper, a slight stain or mark in the ceiling noticed as you lean your head back against a uniform, neutrally colored line of chairs. Within these spaces of waiting, patients, loved ones, caregivers, and staff experience a myriad of situations and emotions. With the benefits of viewing art in mind, the NYC Health + Hospital Arts in Medicine department, led by Assistant Vice President Larissa W. Trinder, recognizes this as an opportunity to think creatively and intentionally beyond the symptoms and diagnoses that the waiting room foreshadows by activating these spaces via art interventions.
Composed of over 7,000 objects dating as early as the 1930s, the NYC Health + Hospitals Art Collection can be found in eleven hospitals, five nursing homes, six treatment centers, and several community-based clinics. A branch of the larger Arts in Medicine program, the art collection began in the 1930s with the advent of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project that hired artists to make works for government buildings, including a robust mural program that resulted in a large number of commissions in hospitals across New York City. The evolution of the program over the past century provides deep historical insight into the needs and dreams of New Yorkers in the midst of escalating change in daily city life. Furthermore, the mission of the Arts in Medicine program has held firm in its commitment to inclusion, response, and care—values core to New York identity.
Currently at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, on Broadway in Bushwick, We Belong Here curated by Ryan Patrick with works by Anthony Barboza, Viktoriya Basina, Arnold Belkin, Arun Bose, Sang-ah Choi, LeRoy Clarke, José Morales, Carla Torres, and Zeehan Wazed underscores the fundamental connection between feelings of belonging, care, and health within the context of the experience of migration. Bringing together works from the Arts in Medicine collection and three newly commissioned pieces by Basina, Torres, and Wazed, Patrick commented on the primary concerns at hand in the show:
In a time of deep fear and uncertainty around immigration, democracy, and belonging, working with these artists—ranging from pioneers in the Arts in Medicine collection dating back to the 1970s to newly commissioned voices—was a balm. It reminded me that in moments of crisis, it’s okay to double down on culture, identity, and community. There is so much power in telling our stories. That’s where real healing begins: when we insist that belonging is not just a personal right but a collective, universal one—and a vital part of healthcare. We hope the communities in Bushwick and Bed-Stuy feel that sense of affirmation and care through WE BELONG HERE.
Themes of intergenerational and collective care resonate throughout the show. Torres’s La Caramelera (2025) presents a strong, intimate portrait of a mother and child—a timeless theme throughout art history that Torres evokes here through her portrayal of a self-contained, contemporary migrant mother providing care and security for her child, carrying her young one on her back and candy to sell in her hands. Torres surrounds the mother and child with vibrant vegetation native to Torres’ hometown of Quito, Ecuador, suggesting that it is not only the child and the candy that the woman carries with her.
Basina also engages with the theme of mother and child in her opulent work Migration (2025). The artist incorporates oil, wood, kiln-fired fused glass, stone, smalti, glass mosaic, silver leaf, and patina onto an arch-shaped canvas, imbuing the work with a sense of spiritual richness and mystical hope. Scattered throughout the background, individual eyes look out from behind the mother and child, symbolizing the collective care of the community and perhaps the watchful spirits of generations past. In the exhibition installation, the glass that protects the work reflects large circular lights hanging in the lobby, layering halos of light all around the mother and child and the reflection of the viewer in the glass.
Nearby, Bubbles (2001) by Sang-ah Choi, a long rectangular work with rounded edges and layered with warm tones of gold, yellow, brown, and black emphasizes multiplicity, fluidity, and movement, all integral to identity and collectivity. Abstracted figures collaged on a top layer of resin covering the entire work populate the surface, each covered by circular holes resembling bubbles all over their bodies. An inch or so beneath them on the surface of the wood, gestural flora rendered with tiny strokes of black ink stand in a field of warm brown color dotted with thousands of specks of iridescent glitter. Wavy shadows of the collaged figures appear on this backdrop while the shiny, hard resin surface of the work reflects street views seen through the windows across the lobby as well as the circular lights within it, echoing the title of the work.
A distinct highlight of the exhibition, the pairing of Untitled by Clarke and King Cobra by Bose (both 1972) showcases the complexity and simplicity of line and shape on paper. Each work features a hybrid form resembling a mask, alluding to the nature in which identity is negotiated socially and internally. Also engaging with abstraction and figuration, Morales’ Untitled (1975), a profile photograph of a man smeared with bright green paint, accompanied by a set of fingerprints below it, presents a prescient awareness of technology’s role in surveillance and reduction of identities via classification and aggregate data.
Supported by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, the Arts in Medicine program continually evolves, responding to issues impacting NYC. In addition to We Belong Here, NYC Health + Hospitals / Bellevue recently unveiled a new selection of artworks in the south lobby of the H Building, curated by Emireth Herrera Valdés, complementing the community mural by Josh Sarantitis. Additionally, Arts in Medicine facilitates partnerships with programs such as HHArt of Medicine, Artist-in-Residence, Music & Memory, Lullaby Project, Music for the Soul, and Community Mural. Despite the dystopian attack on arts support and public health from the current federal administration, Arts in Medicine connects these two intimately linked fields—curate and cure share the same Latin root cura, meaning to care—and demonstrates the tough love that defines the city of New York which, in turn, is ultimately defined by its people.
