FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 – MURALS AT HARLEM HOSPITAL

By admin

I cannot believe this Monday is our 150th issue!!!
Send us your favorite articles and items that were in the first 149 issues of FROM THE ARCHIVES.
Your comments are welcome too.
We will feature them in issue #150.
Issue #150 is on MONDAY.

Send to rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4,  2020

The

148th  Edition

From Our Archives

MURALS 
AT 
HARLEM HOSPITAL

HARLEM HOSPITAL 

“PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS” 

MURALS BY
VERTIS HAYES

At Harlem Hospital, Murals Get a New Life

From the NY Times (C):
By Robin Pogrebin Sept. 16, 2012
This article is from 2012 and the mural pavilion is easy visible from the street

When the Works Progress Administration commissioned murals for Harlem Hospital Center in 1936, it easily approved the sketches submitted by seven artists, which depicted black people at work and at play throughout history. The hospital, however, objected, saying four of the sketches focused too much on “Negro” subject matter and that blacks “may not form the greater part of the Community” in years to come. Protesters rallied around the art, though, lodging complaints as high as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the murals ultimately prevailed.

Over the years, those wall paintings deteriorated or were obscured by plaster. Now they have been restored and brought front and center as part of a new, $325 million patient pavilion for the hospital, on Lenox Avenue at 135th Street that will be unveiled on Sept. 27. The WPA’s Federal Art Project, created in 1935 to support and employ artists, commissioned more than 500 murals for New York City’s public hospitals.

Harlem Hospital’s were perhaps the first major federal government commissions awarded to African-Americans.

The artists — the last of whom, Georgette Seabrooke, died last year — were not well known and their murals portrayed ordinary people going about their daily lives. Vertis Hayes’s “Pursuit of Happiness” panel traces the African diaspora from 18th-century African village life to slavery in America to 20th-century freedom; from agrarian struggles in the South to professional success in the industrialized North.

Ms. Seabrooke’s “Recreation in Harlem” depicts children roughhousing, a couple dancing, a group of women chatting. After decades of renovations and building changes, some of the murals had all but disappeared. But they were rediscovered in 2004 during a campus modernization project by the architecture firm HOK. At that point, all conservators could see of the Seabrooke mural was the left-hand corner where the artist had signed her name.

The new pavilion at Harlem Hospital will showcase murals.The murals’ new home is a 192,000-square-foot building — called the Mural Pavilion — that connects the existing Martin Luther King Jr. Pavilion to the Ron Brown Building. The Mural Pavilion contains new intensive care units, surgery rooms, clinics, imaging spaces and an emergency department.

Part of the hospital’s mandate to the architects was to save the murals, and the cost has been considerable, topping $4 million, which had to be raised privately. “We were going to preserve these national treasures,” said Deborah Thornhill, the hospital’s associate executive director for strategic planning. “They’re an important part of the history of the hospital, the community and the country.” Where the murals had been visible only to staff members and patients, now they have a gallery all to themselves, visible from the street.

Digital enlargements of three of the murals adorn the building’s 12,000-square-foot glass facade. These color images — printed on the glass using ceramic ink — are a city block long and five stories high. “All the murals tell wonderful stories,” said Chuck Siconolfi, HOK’s senior principal for health care. “We said, ‘Let’s go beyond displaying these murals and make them emblematic of the whole community and its role in American life.” “This was not only a cultural device but a therapeutic device,” he added.

“They are as much a tool in the delivery of care as any radiological device or any scalpel.” Because the digital copies of the murals are backlit, the facade essentially becomes a light box, “to the point,” Kenneth Drucker, HOK’s director of design, said jokingly, “where there could be some traffic accidents on the street.

The facade can also be appreciated from inside the building, the architects said, since column-free corridors are directly behind it, and patients can look into the gallery from adjoining waiting areas and hallways. “When you talk to people about the murals, they listen politely,” Ms. Thornhill said. “It’s only when they walk in the gallery and see how awesome they are that you get the ‘wow’ moment.”

The other murals include Charles Alston’s “Magic in Medicine” and “Modern Medicine,” a diptych that highlights both traditional and modern healing practices in Africa and the United States. A ritual Fang reliquary sculpture from Gabon, in Central Africa, for example, is juxtaposed with a microscope. Ms. Thornhill said Mr. Alston featured Myra Logan, whom he would later marry, as a nurse in the painting; she was an intern at the time and eventually became a surgeon. Mr. Alston also included the microbiologist Louis Pasteur and a surgeon modeled after Louis T. Wright, the first African-American physician appointed to the hospital and a friend of the artist. “The artist wanted to share the importance of African-American and white physicians working together toward a common goal,” Ms. Thornhill said.

More than 75 years ago, in response to the initial rejection of the murals by the hospital superintendent, the Harlem Artists Guild issued a statement with the Artists Union — copies of which were sent to Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia and members of President Roosevelt’s cabinet in addition to the president himself. The hospital had rejected the murals, citing the extent of the “Negro subject matter,” the possible demographic change in the neighborhood in years to come and the hospital’s perception that the murals would offend some blacks. Publicity about the controversy aroused support for the artists. The hospital’s commissioner eventually reversed his decision after determining that “there was no offense to Negroes in these paintings.”

The current restoration of the murals was overseen by the city’s Public Design Commission, which questioned whether it was appropriate to display the murals so prominently because, as a matter of history, they had previously been located largely out of public view.

The surviving son of Ms. Hayes testified before the commission that it was not only appropriate “but the correction of an injustice to have hidden them in a back corridor,” Ms. Thornhill said. Although the hospital raised $4.2 million to restore the murals, it is still seeking funds to finish the work; Ms. Seabrooke’s mural — the most conservation intensive — still needs $400,000 worth of work. “It was a struggle for the artists to create them,” said Denise C. Soares, the hospital’s executive director. “And it was our honor to conserve their legacy.”

The new pavilion at Harlem Hospital will showcase murals. Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

“MODERN SURGERY AND ANESTHESIA”
ALFRED CIMI

Alfred Cimi’s Modern Surgery and Anesthesia is the only fresco in the Harlem Hospital Center. Crimi, an accomplished fresco artist trained in Italy, was the only non-African American commissioned for the project. A fresco is a challenging technique in which watercolor is applied rapidly to wet lime plaster. As it dries, the colors become fixed in the plaster. Modern Surgery and Anesthesia was created in an alcove in the former Physician’s Dining Room.

“RECREATION IN HARLEM”

GEORGETTE SEABROOKE

A detail of Georgette Seabrooke’s “Recreation in Harlem.”Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York Times

“IN PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS”
VERTIS HAYES

Vertis Hayes’s eight-panel mural spans both walls of the first-floor corridor of the New Nurses Residence. The work chronologically follows an arc of African American history, transporting the viewer from Africa to America, from an African village to an American city peopled by African Americans in zoot suits and white nurse’s dresses. The mural also suggests the migration of African Americans from their agrarian lives in the South to the industrialized North, an experience of personal significance for the artist who himself migrated from Atlanta to New York. Hayes’s work deploys numerous motifs of progress, which, for many artists of the period, was symbolized by capitalism and Western civilization. In this mural, Hayes describes the irresistible force of progress symbolized by a giant cog. Most likely, he borrowed this symbol from another African American artist, Aaron Douglas, who uses a cog in his 1934 muralAspects of Negro Life, also created under the patronage of the WPA for the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library.

FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE RESTORATION OF THE MURALS BY EVERGREENE STUDIOS PLEASE SEE:
https://evergreene.com/results/?scope=projects&query=HARLEM%20HOSPITAL&filters=

FRIDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR ENTRY TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
WIN A KIOSK TRINKET

THURSDAY  PHOTO  OF THE DAY

Crocodile  1st century BC- 1st century AD   Red granite

In ancient times crocodiles lived in great numbers on the banks of the Nile. Ancient Egyptians had an ambivalent attitude toward these animals, as they did toward many other species. Crocodiles were the most dangerous creatures in the Egyptian environment, and so embodied the essence of evil. On the other hand, they were also believed to incarnate the ba (soul) of the creator god Sobek. In this role crocodiles represented cosmic and regenerative powers, and might accompany deities such as Isis.

During Hellenistic and Roman times the cults of the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, along with elements of their Egyptian iconography including the crocodile, spread widely throughout the Mediterranean and reached Rome itself. Placed in the context of Roman art, crocodile images served primarily to evoke the Nilotic environment. This superb sculpture serves the same function today at the temple of Dendur.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

TEMPLE OF DENDUR
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
(HE WAS GREETING VISITORS)

CLARIFICATION
WE ARE HAPPY TO GIVE WINNERS OF OUR DAILY PHOTO IDENTIFICATION A TRINKET FROM THE VISITOR CENTER.
ONLY THE PERSON IDENTIFYING THE PHOTO FIRST WILL GET A PRIZE. WE HAVE A SPECIAL GROUP OF ITEMS TO CHOOSE FROM. WE CANNOT GIVE AWAY ALL OUR ITEMS,.PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES, WE MUST LIMIT GIVE-AWAYS. THANK YOU

ITEMS OF THE DAY

FROM THE KIOSK

GREAT STUFF FOR ALL OCCASIONS

HUMOROUS BLUE Q COIN PURSES   $5-

KIOSK IS OPEN SATURDAY AND SUNDAY 12 NOON TO 5 P.M.
ORDER ON-LINE BY CHARGE CARD AT ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM

EDITORIAL

My neighbor Anne Cripps asked me a question this morning about the Harlem Hospital murals. I hope this issue is the answer.  The project was done in 2012 by Evergreene Studios.  Working in an active hospital, which was under construction and restoration at the time revealed a wonderful art experience after many years of planning and restoration.

Harlem is a municipal hospital owned and operated by the NYC Health + Hospitals.  This hospital, like Coler treats all persons without question of immigration status or ability to pay. 

Judith Berdy

Text by Judith Berdy
Thanks to Bobbie Slonevsky for her dedication to Blackwell’s Almanac and the RIHS
Thanks to Deborah Dorff for maintaining our website
Edited by Melanie Colter  and Deborah Dorff
Roosevelt Island Historical Society
WIKIPEDIA (C)

TEXT AND IMAGES NY TIMES (C)
EVERGREENE STUDIOS
NYC HEALTH + HOSPITALS
ROOSEVELT ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS
CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD

Copyright © 2020 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com