“Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion, as hard a preparation as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.”
Those words from Florence Nightengale inspired HUP Nursing alumna Kathleen Shaver HUP’76 to paint the collection of pieces titled “The History of Nursing As Seen Through the Lens of Art,” an installation that commemorates 125 years of nursing education at Penn. Commissioned by the HUP Alumni Board, the collection of oil paintings—some original, some detailed copies of works by artists ranging from Thomas Eakins to Mary Cassatt to Roy Lichtenstein—was unveiled last month in the Ware Lobby of Fagin Hall.
—S.H.
