Photos of the Unveiling and Donation of "The Gift" collection Rosalind Franklin University

The Unveiling of "The Gift"

Introduction by Dr. Welch

Speech by Dr. Manion

Unveiling by Mr. & Mrs. Klintworth and Dr. Welch

"The Gift" unveiled

Dr. Lindsay Klintworth

Reception that followed.

About the show-

“The Fine Arts Examine the Medical Arts” Exhibit Opens Feb. 15 at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science

Six Artists Reveal Challenges of Today’s Medical and Healthcare Education

How is a healer made? Who dares to open the human body - a brilliant piece of engineering - and repair it? Is medicine art, or science, or both?

Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science offers rare insights into these and other questions during the world premier of the exhibit “The Fine Arts Examine the Medical Arts,” which opens Feb. 15 at the university's William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine.

In an unprecedented move, the North Chicago-based University opened its doors to six nationally-recognized artists who studied the inner-workings of the institution's colleges and clinics in an attempt to reveal how the medical arts are learned and taught. The resulting collection of paintings in oils, watercolor, pastel and graphite, offers a fresh and startling perspective on the challenges taken up by the modern medical and health care student.

"Artists, like doctors, observe the physical world," said David McKay, coordinator of the Scholl College's Feet First Museum and curator of the exhibit. “Their sense of curiosity drives their art just like curiosity drives students and physicians here. We threw open the doors and they could see anything they wanted."

The relationship between art and science is centuries old. Great artists, including da Vinci and Michelangelo, dissected cadavers as a way to understand the human body. In turn, anatomists studied the artists’ highly accurate drawings.

Both artists and scientists need to understand the essentials before they can master their craft, observed Dr. Marc Abel, associate professor of cell biology and anatomy.

“It’s when they go beyond the fundamental that they understand the need for the fundamental,” Abel said.

None of the artists in the special exhibition have backgrounds in medical illustration. All are representational landscape or portrait painters. Artist Andrea Vincent, who observed a student's first surgery, was surprised at the calm in the operating room. Afterward, she asked "Why was there no blood?"
In her work titled “The First Cut,” the watercolorist captures the instant before a medical student makes a first-ever surgical incision, a moment she calls “the transcendent point between craft and art.

"The painting is really about the doctor's 30 years of experience and 20 years or more of study and how it comes down to this moment," McKay said. "It is absolutely real that this guy is going to cut that foot. The artist focuses on that point of knowledge. Everything else in the painting is very abstract."

Landscape artist Kathleen Newman discovers “a single moment of brilliance” as a medical student inserts a needle into a single cell. She compares the student’s concentration and skill to an artist handling a paintbrush.

“Both medicine and art are connected,” Newman said. “They’re both observing the same phenomenon, seeing the beauty of life and trying to preserve it.”

McKay hopes the exhibit, which is expected to tour the United States and abroad, will help to draw interest to careers in medicine and health care.

“Medicine is an educational process, it’s not gold dust,” McKay said. “Depicting that is one way to light fire to the imagination with an inclination for the profession.”

Other artists and their subjects in “The Fine Arts Examine the Medical Arts” include:

Oil painter Ken DeWaard depicts hands-on learning with cadavers. It is in cutting into cadavers that “students realize the reality of what they are going to do with their lives,” Dr. Mark Abel said.
Plein air artist Nancy King Mertz explores the bond students share with mentor physicians. “Students don’t remember whether they failed or passed a test,” said Dr. David Armstrong, professor of surgery and associate dean of research. “They remember their attending showing them how to do things.”
Antonia Franck draws in graphite the roles deans and administrators play - providing structure and philosophical direction to the institution.
Scott Tallman Powers uses oils to depict clinics and classrooms.

“Fine Arts Examines Medical Arts” will be on display at Rosalind Franklin University’s Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine, in the Feet First Museum, through March 15.

Original artwork, including signed and numbered prints along with unnumbered prints, will be available for purchase. Paintings may be viewed after February 8 at: HYPERLINK "http://www.rosalindfranklin.edu/" \o "http://www.rosalindfranklin.edu/" www.rosalindfranklin.edu.

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