GE HealthCare is dipping its toe in the art world, signing up to sponsor a HLTH gallery of pieces by healthcare professionals, patients and caregivers that will go on display in Europe later this year.
HLTH has partnered with Genees-Kunst Arts and Medicine Foundation and UCLH Arts and Heritage—the arts program of University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust—for the project. The HLTH Europe Art Gallery, which will open for visitors in Amsterdam in June, will show artworks from the two organizations alongside pieces from European hospitals and art groups.
As well as physical pieces, the gallery will show digital images of artworks on screens. Anyone who has undergone medical treatment or works in healthcare can submit paintings, sculptures, digital art, short videos and photography for consideration. HLTH will stop accepting submissions at the end of May and is working with artists to arrange workshops on topics including clay modeling and watercolors.
“We recognize the therapeutic power of art and its contribution to patients' holistic wellbeing and would encourage everyone in the healthcare ecosystem to consider submitting their work. We look forward to providing a creative outlet for patients and healthcare professionals,” Simon Philip Rost, chief marketing officer for enterprise imaging at GE HealthCare, said in a statement.
An online gallery already features tens of artworks, including a mixed media collage about the opioid crisis, a drawing of horses by GE HealthCare’s own Taha Kass-Hout and a photograph by a patient from Germany.
The gallery extends a long history of projects that sit at the intersection of healthcare and art. In 2023 alone, Novartis commissioned sculptures of blood cancer symptoms, Almirall adapted fine art to debunk atopic dermatitis myths and Blackrock Neurotech used “thought-to-cursor” technology to allow paralyzed patients to create art. The year before, Connect In Pharma launched a European art exhibition.