As We Wait and Heal: 40 Years of the U of A Hospital Art Collection
Sometimes it only takes one person to spark changes that ripple through thousands of lives. That was the case in the late 1970s, when the Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre was still in the planning stage and William Bernard McMullen, Vice Chairman of the University of Alberta Hospital Board and Chairman of the Alberta Art Foundation, recognized an opportunity to make the new complex more humane and welcoming. Over four decades later, his vision endures in the artworks that line its corridors—alive with colour, gesture, and human touch—offering moments of warmth and contemplation in nearly every meandering hallway and windowless waiting room.
On the surface, McMullen was an unlikely champion of art in healthcare settings. A chartered accountant by profession—an avid traveller, skier, backpacker, and father of three school-aged children—he had no experience of long hospital stays and wasn’t even an amateur painter. Yet he instinctively understood the loss of identity many patients endure, and the quiet pain intensified by time-stopping boredom and sterile surroundings: pale walls decorated with clinical imagery set against the cold glow of fluorescent lights.
Art, he believed, belonged in public spaces where people were hurting and healing—where families make life-and-death decisions, and patients long for reprieve from the metallic clamour and incessant beeping. As his son Doug McMullen recalls, his Dad envisioned a hospital filled with art, along with a designated quiet area that would serve as a “refuge from the day-to-day going on…that little oasis of calm in the sea of chaos.”
Establishing an art collection in a hospital setting was an uphill battle from the outset, and McMullen faced considerable resistance. Foundational research on the impact of the visual environment in healthcare didn’t fully emerge until 1984, when Roger Ulrich published his landmark study demonstrating that views of nature could reduce hospital stays, complications, and the need for pain medication. A surge of research in the 1990s and early 2000s further established the role of art and environment in patient well-being—confirming what McMullen had intuited decades earlier: that seeing itself is part of healing.
Through his persistence, passion, and wide network of connections, McMullen set in motion a vision that would grow not only into the hospital’s extensive art collection but also into a gallery. He didn’t live to see it realized; he died in a tragic accident in 1979 at the age of 47.
McMullen’s passing galvanized the Edmonton arts community, along with cultural and hospital institutions, into action. What began as one man’s vision became a shared commitment, carried forward with renewed urgency. Among those who stepped in was Terry Fenton, the then Director of the Edmonton Art Gallery (now the Art Gallery of Alberta), who, together with the McMullen Steering Committee—composed of prominent Edmonton figures—encouraged others to purchase or donate works to the hospital.
By the time the Walter C. Mackenzie Health Sciences Centre opened, McMullen’s vision had become embedded in the institutional environment, and with the completion of Phase II in 1986, approximately 900 works—featuring many prominent Canadian artists—were installed throughout the hospital complex. Equally significant was the creation of a dedicated space offering respite from the clamour of hospital life. Initially known as the “Rest and Relaxation Area,” it was later renamed in his honour as the McMullen Gallery—one of the earliest and most influential spaces within a Canadian healthcare setting for the display of art and other forms of creative expression designed to comfort and engage patients.
Initially volunteer-run, the gallery outgrew its informal structure as the collection expanded and conservation demands increased. In 1990, a more formal program was established under the leadership of dedicated staff and the auspices of the Friends of University Hospital. Since that time, the gallery has become one of the few professionally run Arts in Health programs in Canada, complemented by approximately 2,000 works woven throughout the hospital complex.
Across the past four decades, the Arts in Health program has extended beyond the gallery walls into the life of the hospital: Artists On the Ward working at patient bedsides, workshops unfolding in the gallery, storytelling, and music drifting through the corridors. Even the atrium occasionally became a site of exuberant dance performances. Art was no longer simply seen, but lived—felt in the rhythms and interruptions of care.
Yet the core of McMullen’s vision endures, and the program remains grounded in its roots as a deeply collaborative process, shaped by patients, staff, artists, and selection committees composed of community volunteers. Within this shared framework, the collection has continued to evolve in the hands of successive directors and curators, each bringing a distinctive lens.
Among the most recent was Susan Pointe, who, in 1999, was recruited from the prestigious McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Ontario to return to her native Edmonton and direct the collection. For her, diversity was essential. She brought her immense energy to shaping a more inclusive vision—one that expressed the varied stories and experiences of patients, families, and staff. In particular, she noticed the near absence of whimsy and humour as a significant omission. When sensitively placed, artworks such as the glass garments suspended on a clothesline at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute could elicit a much-needed smile. Her approach broadened the collection’s expressive range, opening space for lightness even in moments of grief. (continued on reverse)
Building on Pointe’s vision, Michelle Cassavant directed the collection with a gentle touch and quiet attentiveness to patients’ needs. One of her greatest joys was helping people select art. Through careful listening, she developed a nuanced understanding of the different wards, where even small choices mattered. It wasn’t simply a matter of choosing nature-based imagery—winter landscapes were often shunned, while abstraction was welcomed so long as a trace of the natural world remained. Even colour required care: cheerful tones were generally preferred—except, notably, pink. In reflecting on her time there, what stayed with her were the quiet encounters: patients arriving at the gallery with IV poles, or pausing before a work in a windowless room and finding a moment of comfort and reprieve.
When Ellen Cunningham took over the care of the collection in 2015, she raised the bar even higher. Alongside a commitment to cultural sensitivity—broadening the collection to reflect diverse communities—she has opened new channels for patient response, introducing QR codes, focus groups, and surveys. These revealed that discomfort often arises when meaning is unclear, prompting the addition of explanatory labels and expanded staff communication, with plans for a “work of the week” initiative. Her extensive research also pointed to a desire for more figurative work, leading to acquisitions such as Lauren Crazybull’s intimate depictions of her First Nations friends and acquaintances. Cunningham’s direction also moves beyond calming imagery toward work in which patients can see their own experiences reflected, as in Blair Brennan’s body-on-fire drawing, which evokes the fiery intensity of living with illness.
And yet, as the program has grown in ways McMullen could never have foreseen, the core of his vision endures. Each successive steward has expanded its reach while holding fast to its purpose. As Cunningham reflects, “Humanity can be lost in a medical setting. But when patients walk the halls and see their own story in the work, they feel something beyond these walls. That’s the power art has: to connect people to something bigger and deeper than themselves.”
Building on Pointe’s vision, Michelle Cassavant directed the collection with a gentle touch and quiet attentiveness to patients’ needs. One of her greatest joys was helping physicians and staff select art. Through careful listening, she developed a nuanced understanding of the different wards, where even small choices mattered. It wasn’t simply a matter of choosing nature-based imagery—winter landscapes were often shunned, while appropriate and carefully selected abstraction was welcomed. Even colour required care: cheerful tones were generally preferred—except, notably, pink. In reflecting on her time there, what stayed with her were the quiet encounters: patients arriving at the gallery with IV poles, or pausing before a work in a windowless room and finding a moment of comfort and reprieve.
When Ellen Cunningham took over the care of the collection in 2014, she raised the bar even higher. Alongside a commitment to cultural sensitivity—broadening the collection to reflect diverse communities—she has opened new channels for patient response, introducing QR codes, focus groups, and surveys. These revealed that discomfort often arises when meaning is unclear, prompting the addition of explanatory labels and expanded staff communication, with plans for a “work of the week” initiative. Her extensive research also pointed to a desire for more figurative work, leading to acquisitions such as Lauren Crazybull’s intimate depictions of her First Nations friends and acquaintances. Cunningham’s direction also moves beyond calming imagery toward work in which patients can see their own experiences reflected, as in Blair Brennan’s body-on-fire drawing, which evokes the fiery intensity of living with illness.
And yet, as the program has grown in ways McMullen could never have foreseen, the core of his vision endures. Each successive steward has expanded its reach while holding fast to its purpose. As Cunningham reflects, “Humanity can be lost in a medical setting. But when patients walk the halls and see their own story in the work, they feel something beyond these walls. That’s the power art has: to connect people to something bigger and deeper than themselves.”
-Agnieszka Matejko, 2026
