Yale-New Haven ​“Art Corridor” Revitalized

When photographer Terry Wild submitted a color evocation of a bench at the beach for display at a hospital in Pennsylvania, it was rejected for suggesting isolation and being too depressing for ill patients and their visiting families.

At Yale-New Haven Hospital’s St. Raphael campus, Wild’s image of the bench by the sea easily made the cut.

A half dozen more of Wild’s photographs, paired with a dozen oil paintings by Layne Marholan, are now adorning an increasingly visible peripatetic gallery space, Art Corridor, on the busy first floor of the hospital.

The show went up on Monday and will be on display through the end of Feb. 29.

Wild and Marholan, a photographer and a painter, are the second pair of artists to show this year in the two-person display area, essentially one long wall opposite the cafeteria; last month’s artists were New Haven-based William Meddick and Guilford-based Noelle King.

Although Art Corridor, the formal name for the space, has been the scene of art displays for 20 years, organized by the Yale-New Haven Hospital Auxiliary for fundraising purposes, the new curator of the site, Jane Snaider, is upping the space’s visibility.

She hopes to be raising more money for the hospital — the auxiliary’s fundamental function — but in the process, give local artists another well-trafficked venue for display.

A savvy former director of tourism for New Haven under Mayor Ben DiLieto, Snaider came on board the auxiliary as a volunteer three years ago. Snaider said that in its previous incarnation, the selection of artists for Arts Corridor was very ad hoc. The curator of the shows would see art she liked at this venue or that and informally invite the artist to show at the hospital.

That no longer obtains.

“Since I’m connected with the arts community, I did a call for artists,” Snaider said. She sent out notices to the arts organizations in the area and pulled together a committee of selectors that includes artists, a gallery owner, and city arts czar Andy Wolf, among other volunteers.

“I wanted to give Arts Corridor more exposure, both as a fundraiser and to take it to the next level [as a venue for artists],” she said.

As in the past, 75 percent of proceeds of the sale of any work goes to the artist, and 25 percent to the auxiliary for different aspects of patient care. The auxiliary also runs the hospital’s several gift shops and significant monies are raised — about a $1 million annually — as a donation for patient care, Snaider said. She wants to up the amount derived from art sales.

Last year Snaider and her selection committee received an impressive response from about 80 artists wanting to participate. The committee members were charged with choosing 12, one for each month of 2016, but they instantly ran into trouble because the committee members liked too many of the art works, Snaider recalled.

“They liked so much. ​‘Can we pick two?’” they asked, Snaider reported.

With so many photographers submitting, it was decided at least for this year to pair a photographer with an artist.

And there were no rigid restrictions in what to choose, either in the charge Snaider gave to the artists or the judges who ended up selecting Marholan and Wild.

However, ​“this is a hospital setting,” Snaider reminded artists and the committee members.

For that reason, the adjectives that generally describe the aesthetic of Wild, Marholan, and the future artists to display on the Art Corridor’s walls are ​“upbeat, colorful, happy, nothing somber, and mostly figurative,” Snaider said.

Wild appreciated that his image of the bench by the sea got in the Yale-New Haven show because he said choosing works to hang in a hospital setting ​“is a little difficult for an artist.”

We don’t want political art, and we want it all soothing, was how Wild interpreted the constraint. It’s a particular problem for him because a very big part of his most personal work is anything but. ​“It’s edited landscaped,” he said, by which he meant the paving over with concrete of the more natural surfaces of the world.

None of that is in the Art Corridor show, but the bench is, and Snaider likes it. She said someone told her that the bench evoked a feeling of relaxation, not abandonment. It’s waiting for you to put yourself into it, she said.

Does Art Heal?

While that question wasn’t definitively answered during the hanging of the work on Monday, the healers were certainly stopping to look at the work. Cardiologist Dr. Ron Nudel said not only did he look at the work on display regularly, he got the idea to line his own private office in Hamden with art works.

He was trying to get other doctors in Hamden to do the same, he said. Snaider offered to help. Cards were exchanged, and the reach of the Auxiliary, and art was instantly expanded.

Before he went in to the cafeteria for a snack, second-year cardiology fellow Dr. Benjamin Vaccaro also stopped, approached, and peered closely at Wild’s photographs and Marholan’s landscapes. He said he stopped to look each time the art was changed and a new show put up.

On whether art actually heals, Vaccaro said he wasn’t up on the research and so could not offer a studied response. ​“My personal opnion is that art is a part of life. Our goal is not just to cure illness, but to help patients to lead a richer life,” he added.