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Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry
11/15/1997 - 1/11/1998
Hospice care, offering physical, emotional and spiritual
assistance to terminally ill people and their families, is the
subject of a unique photographic exhibition at the Norton Museum of
Art, November 15, 1997 through January 11, 1998. "Hospice: A
Photographic Inquiry" is organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in
collaboration with the National Hospice Foundation.
The exhibition includes newly commissioned works by five outstanding
American photographers: Jim Goldberg, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Jack
Radcliffe and Kathy Vargas. Each artist's project documents
individual perspectives on the emotional and collaborative
experience of living and working in hospice environments throughout
the country. Investigating the hospice movement by immersing artists
in the world of patients, families and health care providers, the
exhibition is intended to create a broad public understanding of
hospice experiences, benefits and goals.
The local presentation of the exhibition is underwritten in part by
First National in Palm Beach/First Union's Private Bank and the R.
H. Norton Trust, with additional support from Hospice of Palm Beach
County, Inc. and Sophia McPherson. Major funding for "Hospice: A
Photographic Inquiry" has been provided by Warner-Lambert, a
pharmaceutical and consumer products company, as part of its ongoing
commitment to supporting hospice care in the United States and
around the world. The exhibition has also been made possible by a
generous gift from The Project on Death in America, funded by the
Open Society Institute, a non-profit foundation that supports the
development of open societies worldwide. Additional support has been
received from the Public Welfare Foundation, The Nathan Cummings
Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, the National Endowment for the
Arts, The Prudential Foundation, the Glen Eagles Foundation and
Learning Design Associates, Inc.
"Hospice: Photographic Inquiry celebrates the National Hospice
Foundation's mission of expanding America's vision for end-of-life
care," states Zachary P. Morfogen, Chairman of the National Hospice
Foundation. "This major public outreach project fulfills the need of
broadening America's understanding of hospice through the personal
involvement and insights of some of the country's most sensitive
artists.
The Hospice Movement
In an era when humane and affordable health care, mental health
concerns, public education and family unity are difficult issues to
resolve at a national level, hospice is a concept that
sympathetically brings people together in a nurturing environment,
primarily in patients' own homes. Its goal is to manage
intelligently and compassionately the pain and loss of terminal
illness.
Hospices primarily care for patients in their homes. Although cancer
patients make up the majority of people in a typical hospice
program, hospices also care for people with AIDS, Alzheimer's and
other diseases. In the last decade, hospice care has grown from a
little-known alternative to a major movement in health care that
serves more than 300,000 people each year. In 1974 there was one
functional hospice program in the United States; today there are
over 2,000. For many observers, the widening acceptance of the
hospice movement represents an enlightened development in the
complex history of medical care. Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry
examines the growing relevance of this alternative approach to
health care and support for people when facing death.
The Photographers
All five artists in the exhibition are recognized for their
innovative contributions to the photographic medium. While each is
well known for his or her individual style, they share a commitment
to explore emotional subjects through an experimental, visionary
approach. Some of the photographers focused on patients receiving
hospice care in their own homes, while others worked primarily in
hospice facilities.
Jim Goldberg of San Francisco, CA, is a pioneer in contemporary
documentary photography. His work, whether portraying wealthy
families, welfare-hotel residents or nursing-home patients, combines
his subjects' handwritten feelings and artifacts of their existence
with their images. For Hospice, Goldberg photographed his father who
died in hospice care at home in Florida in 1993.
The photographs of Nan Goldin often reveal interpersonal
relationships. This New York artist is recognized as an innovator in
the development of photographic narratives, groups of images
combined in sequence to tell a story. Goldin1s work goes beyond the
often lush surface of her images, revealing facets of contemporary
attitudes, stereotypes, fears and sexual roles. She is best known
for her book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Several of Goldin1s
friends died of AIDS in hospice care, which led her to photograph
patients through Cabrini Hospice in New York City.
Sally Mann's family in Lexington, VA, has been the primary subject
of her increasingly complex and highly respected body of work.
Mann's personal experience with hospice care during her father's
last months led her to explore other families' experiences from
patients' points of view. She interviewed patients in their homes
and created metaphorical images of places and experiences they
described.
In May, 1992, Jack Radcliffe of Baltimore, MD, began a photographic
document about an AIDS hospice in York, PA. His approach relies on
long-term, intimate contact environments to express their inner
nature with the people he portrays. Ranging from the urban poor to
the middle-class, Radcliffe's subjects reveal themselves with
directness and clarity.
Kathy Vargas is a photographer, curator and arts administrator in
San Antonio, Texas. She is best known for her composite hand-colored
photographs that deal with issues of both loss and hope. Her work is
sometimes presented in complex installations that combine objects
and photographs. For this project, Vargas worked with patients and
their families in hospice care in San Antonio, including the San
Antonio AIDS Foundation and St. Benedicts.
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The Norton Museum
of Art is a major cultural attraction in Florida.
The Museum is internationally known for its distinguished permanent
collection featuring
19th and 20th century European and American art, Chinese, contemporary art and photography.
From its founding the Norton has been famous for its masterpieces
of 19th century and 20th century painting
and sculpture by European artists such as Brancusi, Gauguin, Matisse,
Miró, Monet, Picasso
and by Americans such as Davis, Hassam, Hopper, Manship, O'Keeffe,
Pollock and Sheeler.
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