Art as Care: Hospital Murals in Pediatric Healthcare

About the Panel Discussion

When Abram Champanier painted his Alice mural cycle for the children's ward at Gouverneur Hospital in 1938, he understood something that took the field of healthcare design decades to articulate: that the environment in which a child receives care is integral to that care, as much as any clinical intervention. This panel discussion asks what that conviction looks like in New York City's public hospitals today.

Since 2012, RxART has placed nine major commissions by internationally recognized artists throughout NYC Health + Hospitals, with pediatric spaces as a central focus of that work, among them a commission by Julia Chiang, whose work is installed at NYC Health + Hospitals/Maimonides. Alongside those commissions, the Arts in Medicine Community Mural Project, believed to be the largest public hospital mural program in the country since the WPA era, has brought community-rooted artists into pediatric units across the system, including Cindy Lozito, whose mural Seasons of Reciprocity lives in the pediatric inpatient unit at NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan.

This panel brings together the artists, advocates, and hospital leaders behind some of that work to examine what intentional, ambitious art does in the spaces where New York's youngest and most vulnerable patients receive care, and what it demands of the public institutions that serve them. Presented in connection with Another Wonderland: Abram Champanier's Alice Mural.
 

Featured Speakers

• Opening Remarks by Rick Luftglass, Executive Director, Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund; Historian
• Julia Chiang, Artist
• Diane Brown, Founder and Executive Director, RxART
• Cindy Lozito, Community Mural Artist, NYC Health + Hospitals; Creator of Seasons of Reciprocity, Pediatric Inpatient Unit, NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan
• Caitlin Orban, Deputy Director, Operations, NYC Health + Hospitals
• Moderated by Larissa W. Trinder, Assistant Vice President, Arts in Medicine, NYC Health + Hospitals
   

Rick Luftglass is Executive Director of the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, which aims to increase access and opportunity for all New Yorkers and build healthy, vibrant communities. Before joining the Illumination Fund in 2011, Rick spent 16 years at Pfizer, where he served as Executive Director of the Pfizer Foundation and Senior Director of U.S. corporate philanthropy and community engagement, overseeing initiatives in healthcare, science education, and community development. He also led Pfizer's pharmaceutical donations program for low-income uninsured patients at community health centers and public hospitals, providing medicines to more than two million patients annually. Rick began his career in nonprofit arts organizations, producing concerts celebrating jazz and the performing arts traditions of immigrant communities. He currently chairs the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, a New York City nonprofit dedicated to sustaining the cultural heritage of urban immigrant communities. Rick holds an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and a BA in History from Haverford College. 

Julia Chiang is known for her color and energy filled paintings and ceramic works that include forms and marks that are suggestive of the body, landscape and natural phenomena. She always dreamed that her work would allow her to see the world and thankfully has had the opportunity to travel with and through her work. Solo exhibitions include Julia Chiang: The Glows and The Blows, Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, NY; Run Like the Rain, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA; Secret Smile, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Scotland; Salt on Our Skin, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York, NY, and Remember That Time When What, Nanzuka, Tokyo, Japan. Group exhibitions include Rashid, Sheree and Friends, Chateau La Coste, France; Follow Through, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York, NY; The Modern Institute: Space Forgets You, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, UK. Public projects include This Way, That Way, Here, with Art Production Fund at Rockefeller Center; RxArt murals at Maimonides Pediatric ER, Brooklyn, NY; Rockaway Hotel mural in Far Rockaway, Queens, NY and the RxArt mural at the Nappi Wellness Institute, SUNY Upstate, Syracuse, NY. Chiang is represented by The Modern Institute, Nicola Vassell Gallery and Nanzuka. 

Diane Brown: RxART Founder and President Diane Brown has forged a professional path that draws equally from her experience as a pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin and from her career as a gallerist, art dealer, and curator. She owned and operated the Diane Brown Gallery in Washington D.C. between 1976-1982 and in New York City between 1983-1992. The gallery played host to some of the most significant artists of the time, exhibiting work by Louise Lawler, Allan McCollum, and Tony Oursler. Brown was also instrumental in launching careers of Mary Weatherford and Steve Wolfe, among others. After closing the gallery in 1992, Brown worked as a private dealer, the curator of a major corporate photography collection, and as an adjunct professor of arts administration at New York University. She founded RxART in 2000 and RxART Canada in 2015. RxART continues to expand its reach and 2026 has seen the launch of global collaborations. 

Cindy Lozito is a muralist, illustrator, and cartoonist based in Philadelphia, originally from Queens, New York. Her work is rooted in drawing and painting, which she explores through scales as small as comics to as massive as building-wide murals. The themes that most often appear in her work are the power of imagination and play from childhood into adulthood, how we form our identities, processing familial loss through story preservation, and creating spaces that make our surroundings more joyful and colorful than how we first found them. She considers every project an opportunity to use visual storytelling as a bridge of belonging for both the artist and the audience. Some of her clients include the World Trade Center, Abrams Books, the New York Times, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Mural Arts, and more.

Caitlin Orban is Deputy Director, Operations within the NYC Health + Hospitals system and a board-certified, licensed art therapist. She has served with NYC Health + Hospitals since 2013, holding a range of staff- and patient-facing roles. Prior to joining the Health + Hospitals transition team, Caitlin most recently led wellness initiatives supporting frontline healthcare staff. Her clinical experience spans inpatient adult and child psychiatry, chemical dependency/Detox services, and forensic psychiatry. With more than a decade of experience in healthcare, Caitlin has witnessed the transformative impact of creative arts in promoting recovery, resilience, and overall wellbeing. Her approach emphasizes the mind-body connection, using creative and expressive arts to help individuals manage stress and anxiety and enhance quality of life. Caitlin is passionate about integrating creative and expressive arts into healthcare and advancing innovative approaches that support both patient care and workforce wellbeing. Drawing on her clinical and leadership experience, she is dedicated to developing staff wellness initiatives that address compassion fatigue and burnout, strengthen resilience, and cultivate a more compassionate, human-centered healthcare environment. 

Larissa W. Trinder is Executive Director of NYC Health + Hospitals Arts in Medicine. Before joining the largest public health care system in the country, Larissa worked in the health and human service non-profit sector for over 20 years. She is an advocate for the integration of visual and creative arts as an expression to advance patient health outcomes, to enhance staff engagement, and to create a positive impact on the community. Larissa has a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Robert F. Wagner graduate school of public service at New York University.