Association for the promotion of contemporary art in hospitals

Set up in 1999, the association Art dans la cité aims to promote contemporary art in hospitals in a variety of ways: outreach activities to meet artists and learn about the creative process, production of works of art in the presence of patients and so on. Artist-in-residence schemes help to evaluate the effects of creativity on patients’ physical and mental health. Supported by the European Commission’s Cultural Programme, the Association also has an agreement with the Paris hospitals and health care organisation AP-HP and French hospital federation FHF; since its inception it has enabled some sixty hospitals to receive artists and works of art. Beneficiaries range from the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital in Paris to the Tokushima National Hospital in Japan, via the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid. Two juries, one drawn from the art and the other from the hospital world, decide on awards to artists under the scheme. The first is presided over by Michelangelo Pistoletto, a leading figure in the Arte Povera movement, and the second by Jacques-Louis Binet, Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Medicine.