Women Who Dared: Lenox Hill Hospital Celebrates Women Artists and Pays Tribute to Healthcare Heroes

MANHATTAN – A drab gray wall of Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side has been transformed into a museum-like display thanks to a celebration of women artists– all in tribute to the 50,000 women who work for Northwell Health and the one million women they care for each year

“Art has been shown to heal, inspire and bring joy” says philanthropist Sandra Nicolson, who assembled the collection,  it has the greatest impact in a health care setting where it can nurture patients and motivate staff.”

Select art pieces installed in three Northwell hospitals come from a never-before-seen publicly collection of works called ‘Women who Dared.’ The expansive collection includes more than 400 works from every continent, some dating back 2,500 years— each one created by a woman.

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“The grit and perseverance of these pioneering women artists is personified by the unmatched strength of our female workforce,” Elaine Brennan explained— Northwell Health’s executive director of Strategic Partnerships says they “hope that the collection will inspire the communities [they] serve to empower the women in their lives.”

Thirty years ago, Sandra Nicholson and her husband William were inspired to assemble the collection— the largest privately held of its kind— after learning women artists represented less than two-percent of works across the world’s leading museums and galleries at that time.

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The Nicholson’s say as of just a few years ago, representation of women-created works of art at leading institutions had only risen to eleven percent.

Twenty-three select pieces are on display at Northwell’s Manhattan locations.

The following four works of art were unveiled at Lenox Hill Hospital’s announcement of the collection– and in the future, they could be installed there or at another Northwell hospital.

• John F. Kennedy (1963) by Elaine de Kooning
• The Yellow Hat (1926) by Grace Spaulding John
• Composizione Cubofuturista (1913) by Natalia Goncharova
• Flowers on a Yellow Field (1961) by Françoise Gilot

The remaining nineteen pieces on display in Manhattan are located at Lenox Health Greenwich Village and the Manhattan Eye, Ear & Throat Hospital on East 64th street, also on the Upper East Side.

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