Press Releases

NYC Health + Hospitals Community Mural Project Launches Community Paint Parties

All are welcome to help paint the murals

Jun 21, 2023

Painting a mural at a Community Mural Project paint party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst in 2020.

New York, NY

NYC Health + Hospitals’ Arts in Medicine program today announced a new season of paint parties, where anyone can help paint murals using a “paint by numbers” format, and the murals will be permanently installed at hospital sites as part of the NYC Health + Hospitals Community Mural Project. The murals were designed by 10 artists selected earlier this year and developed through focus groups with patients, staff, and neighborhood residents. The system also released the design of a mural by artist Kristy McCarthy that will be installed in the pediatrics department of NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health, and anyone can help paint the mural at the first paint party of the season on Thursday, June 22, from 12pm to 3pm. The Community Mural Project is featured in the latest episode of “That’s So New York” on NYC Life (WNYE-TV/Channel 25), the flagship channel for NYC’s television network, NYC Media. Watch the video here.

“We’re proud to partner with NYC Health + Hospitals to bring 20 more community murals to the system over the next two years,” said Laurie Tisch, Founder and President of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund. “The murals have created so much joy and beauty in facilities in every borough, involved staff in creative collaborations and have offered new ways for people to become engaged with the hospitals. It’s a pleasure to help expand this popular program.”

“The Community Mural Project is a tremendous opportunity to engage our patients, families and staff in a collaborative and engaging process,” said Larissa Trinder, Assistant Vice President of Arts in Medicine at NYC Health + Hospitals. “Public murals reinforce a sense of pride and trust in one’s community. We continue to be grateful to Laurie M. Tisch and her Illumination Fund for her deep awareness and advocacy of the significant role these murals have on public health.”

NYC Health + Hospitals serve communities in all five boroughs. The Community Mural Project is an opportunity to engage patients, families and staff in a collaborative process. Decades of research have shown that the arts can play a role in “healing the healers” as well as improving patient outcomes and forging community health awareness and partnerships.

The new murals will build on the 26 murals created in the first wave of the Community Mural Project and recently featured in a new book, Healing Walls: New York City Health + Hospitals Community Mural Project 2019-2021. The Community Mural Project and other Arts in Medicine programs at NYC Health + Hospitals are made possible with support from the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.

Community members are welcome to help paint a mural at the paint parties:

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health
Thursday, June 22, 12pm – 3pm
2601 Ocean Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11235
Artist Kristy McCarthy (@dgaleart)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens
Wednesday, August 2, 12pm – 3pm
82-68 164th Street, Queens, New York 11432
Artist Zeehan Wazed (@zeehanwazed)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Carter
Date to be confirmed
1752 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10035
Artist Ji Yong Kim (@jiyongkim_art)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Morrisania
Thursday, August 10, 12pm – 3pm
1225 Gerard Avenue, Bronx, NY 10452
Artist Yukiko Izumi (@yi_design_jp)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Kings County
Friday, August 18, 12pm – 3pm
451 Clarkson Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11203
Artist Jodi Dareal (@jodidareal)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Gotham Health, Sydenham
Friday, August 25, 10am – 1pm
264 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10026
Artist Stephanie Costello (@stephcostelloart)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem
Friday, October 13, 12pm – 3pm
506 Lenox Avenue, New York, NY 10037
Artist Tijay Mohammed (@artoftijay)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln
Date to be determined
234 East 149th Street, Bronx, NY 10451
Artist Dister Rondon (@dister)

Paint Party at NYC Health + Hospitals/North Central Bronx
Date to be determined
3424 Kossuth Avenue, Bronx, NY 10467
Artist Roy Secord (@roysecord)

The Community Mural Project is the country’s largest public hospital mural program since the 1930s, when the depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) commissioned murals in public buildings, including virtually every hospital in New York City’s public healthcare system. The WPA murals were the start of NYC Health + Hospitals art collection, which now is the city’s largest public art collection and includes more than 7,000 pieces of art of multiple disciplines. The art collection is used to enhance the healthcare environment, inspire creativity, promote wellness, increase access to the arts, and engage staff.

The Community Mural Project creates opportunities for hospital staff to collaborate with each other and with neighbors, relieve stress, and enhance the physical environment of the facilities. Healthcare worker burnout is a national health crisis, and the continuing COVID-19 pandemic has created mental health challenges across New York City, especially in low-income, immigrant and historically excluded communities, which are significant patient populations for NYC Health + Hospitals.

NYC Health + Hospitals’ collection of more than 7,000 artworks includes historic murals commissioned through the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, paintings, mosaics, photographs, sculptures, installation art, and murals by both emerging and established professional artists. The collection includes works by some of America’s leading artists, such as Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Helen Frankenthaler, Mary Frank, Betty Blayton, Candida Alvarez, Andy Warhol, Alexander Calder, and Keith Haring. More than an art collection, these works create a healing environment, activate spaces, engage staff, promote visual acuity, and expand access to the arts for 43,000 employees and more than 1.2 million patients who receive care NYC Health + Hospitals facilities.

NYC Health + Hospitals’ Arts in Medicine program was recently featured on PBS NewsHour: “Art and medicine intersect in New York City hospitals.”

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MEDIA CONTACT: Press Office, NYC Health + Hospitals, 212-788-3339

Jan Rothschild, Rothschild & Associates, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, 917-891-1126

About the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund

The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund is a New York City-based foundation that strives to improve access and opportunity for all New Yorkers and foster healthy and vibrant communities.  The Illumination Fund plays an active role in supporting innovative approaches across a range of issues – ensuring that the arts and arts education are accessible to all, promoting civic service, and promoting economic opportunity. In 2018, the Illumination Fund launched Arts in Health, a multi-year initiative to support organizations working on health issues that impact New York communities and that emphasize the arts as a tool for healing and building understanding. The initiative’s areas of focus include the role of the arts in addressing mental illness stigma, trauma, and aging-related diseases. In 2019 the Illumination Fund supported the creation of NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine Program, expanding programs serving health care staff, patients, and communities in sites across the City. The partnership also enabled NYC Health + Hospitals to launch new programs that use the arts as a resource to promote employee wellness and resilience and to combat compassion fatigue. The Illumination Fund’s support to organizations goes beyond funding, as it serves as a connector and convener to enable robust collaboration across the City. In 2021, in part due to the Covid 19 Pandemic, the Illumination Fund expanded its focus areas to include the arts in mental health. For more information, visit www.lmtif.org or follow @LMTischFund on Twitter.

About NYC Health + Hospitals’ Arts in Medicine Program

The Arts in Medicine department at NYC Health + Hospitals seeks to foster the emotional well-being and promote healing and wellness for all patients and their families, employees, and the greater community by utilizing the arts, including literary, visual, and performing arts throughout the health care system. In addition to managing the system’s significant visual arts collection, the Arts in Medicine department encourages evidenced based practices and provides technical assistance to all of the system’s health care facilities and clinics. This is accomplished by combining artistic innovation and education into a comprehensive health care continuum that supports the healing benefits of the arts. For more information, visit https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/artsinmedicine/.

About NYC Health + Hospitals

NYC Health + Hospitals is the largest municipal health care system in the nation serving more than a million New Yorkers annually in more than 70 patient care locations across the city’s five boroughs. A robust network of outpatient, neighborhood-based primary and specialty care centers anchors care coordination with the system’s trauma centers, nursing homes, post-acute care centers, home care agency, and MetroPlus health plan—all supported by 11 essential hospitals. Its diverse workforce of more than 43,000 employees is uniquely focused on empowering New Yorkers, without exception, to live the healthiest life possible. For more information, visit www.nychealthandhospitals.org and stay connected on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.