Who made the following observation? "The effect in sickness of beautiful objects, of variety of objects, and especially of brilliancy of colours, is hardly at all appreciated . . . variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects provided to patients is an actual form of recovery." No, I didn't know either (it was Florence Nightingale), but I've just had a lesson in how recuperation can be speeded up with a dose of art.
In 2001, the King's Fund launched the "Enhancing the Healing Environment" programme to introduce good design to hospitals in London. Encouraged by reports from the States - including one that suggested patients had fewer problems recovering from gall-bladder surgery if their bed faced a window looking on to a group of trees rather than a brick wall - the project is not merely about hanging pretty paintings on walls, but involves building gardens, curved glass walls, pastel-coloured flooring and stained-glass windows.
To date, the King's Fund has invested £2.5m in the programme. And the Department of Health is sufficiently impressed that it might commit itself to rolling out (and paying for) beautifully designed wards and sympathetic treatment rooms across the country. What, in the cash-strapped health service? The patient care might remain the same, but giving more care to the surroundings in which it is administered appears to make a significant difference to both recuperation times and readmission. Apparently, if you have an aesthetically fruitful time in hospital, you are less likely to come back. It also seems that creating calming A&E departments results in less patient punch-ups on a Saturday night, which can't be bad.
The art world has been working along similar lines for several years. Take Tate Modern. Its permanent collection is more or less the same as that which hung at the old Tate (now Tate Britain), but the "enhancing" alchemy of putting it in Bankside along with well-styled accoutrements for the general public, not just the paid-up Friends - namely Jasper Morrison leather chairs, a wide and welcoming main entrance, a sumptuous cafe and funky windows offering spectacular views over to St Paul's - achieved a startling change in the nation's gall bladders. Millions more people began to enthuse about Henri Matisse's Snail, Joseph Beuys's felt and fur, even Carl Andre's Equivalent VIII (formerly dismissed with contempt as the "Tate Bricks").
I suspect the newly reopened Museum of Modern Art in New York has found the same effect. Picasso's masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was impressive when temporarily hung in an old warehouse in Queens, but putting it in a sexy new building will give it a cultural fuel injection and encourage people to queue around the block for a glimpse.
Likewise, I would give anything to have a peek at those Van Gogh trophies that broke all fine art auction records back in the 1980s. They were taken off to some corporate holding zone, where they probably still hang in an air-conditioned boardroom, typically viewed by no more than a dozen suits. Vincent's Sunflowers and Irises could be suffering the same fate as those unlucky patients spending their gall-bladder convalescence looking on to brick walls. It's not good for them, and it's not good for art.
