On Tuesday, November 4th, Graduate Design 5 students from FIU Interior Architecture visited The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum for a lecture by local artist Leonel Matheu, who discussed the integration of art in healthcare environments.
FIU Interior Architecture Graduate Design 5 studio and VITAS Innovative Hospice Care have partnered this semester to advance the standard for healthcare design. As part of their design requirements, the students were tasked with selecting art for the in-patient hospice they are designing in the course. Thus, Matheu’s visit was a significant way to learn and understand the value of integrating art in a healthcare environment. Matheu discussed the artwork he created at Jackson South Community Hospital, which was based on the Everglades flora. He provided examples for students of how art can be used not only to evoke interest and positive distraction, but also functionally for wayfinding and as interior objects, such as lights and flooring. By the end of Matheu’s lecture, the FIU Interior Architecture students understood more fully how to begin to appropriately select art that enhances the patient, staff, and family experience in their hospice projects.
The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum recently exhibited Leonel Matheu’s work in the exhibition Leonel Matheu: Crossroads of the Dystopia, which included over twenty years of his work and works that ranged from pencil and ink drawings to oil on canvas, video and installations.
To learn more about the Graduate Design 5 healthcare studio, click here.
This article was written with the help of Sarah Boehm, Assistant Professor.
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