Nursing is an art form, as well as art

There are no nurses painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. You do not see them hanging around Monet's water lilies either. But at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, people can now see these unsung heroines -- in an exhibit that specifically depicts nurses. The Nightingale's Song, an art collection featuring pieces celebrating nurses, is on display at the Berman Gallery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Third in a series of works about medicine, the exhibit started on August 26 and will run through October 29. The paintings span six centuries of nursing -- from caring for black plague victims in Europe to a 1950s South Carolina midwife. "This is the first exhibit ever focusing on the nursing profession in a major art museum," said Karen Buhler-Wilkerson, director of the Center for the Study of the History of Nursing in the Nursing School. The art covers four continents and shows the transition from simply caring for the sick to the recent professionalization of nurses. The 80 prints, drawings and photographs are part of the museum's Ars Medica Collection -- a collection of over 3,000 pieces on medicine, pharmacology and public health. The entire collection was made possible by grants from Philadelphia-based pharmaceutical firm SmithKline Beecham and a donation by William Helfand, an authority on the history of art and medicine who also curated the nursing exhibit. Funding for the publication accompanying the exhibit was made possible by Bayada Nurses, a nationwide homecare organization, and the Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. In 1995, the museum showcased a similar exhibit featuring pharmacology and in 1999, an exhibit featuring dentistry. Pieces in both exhibits were also part of the Ars Medica Collection. In addition to attending to patients, other pieces feature nurses attending the military, as the need for nurses increases during wartime. A portion of the exhibit is also devoted to midwifery. Though many of the pieces depict nurses in a positive light, some pieces, especially those made prior to the professionalization of the field, paint a negative image. For example, Sairey Gamp, a character in Charles Dicken's Martin Chuzzlewit who nurses, is portrayed as uneducated and inebriated. The art exhibit also celebrates Philadelphia's nursing heritage. The Woman's Hospital Training School for Nursing, the first nursing school in the United States, was founded in Philadelphia by Ann Preston in 1861. "It is appropriate for the first exhibit featuring nurses to be located in a city that featured the first nursing school," Buhler-Wilkerson said. As part of the Museum's Wednesday Night Program, on October 11 the institution will feature a gallery talk and the feature film So Proudly We Hail, a story of nurses on Bataan during World War II.