Vermont Business Magazine“There are pictures in the hospitals, but none in the patients’ rooms.”Those words, spoken by Susan Sebastian to her mother during one of her many lengthy hospital stays, brought about the Susan Sebastian Foundation. After Susan’s death in April 2009, Elise Braun decided to honor the memory of her daughter by providing art for patient rooms in Vermont hospitals. The art chosen, all created by Vermont artists, is intended to transport the patient beyond the hospital walls that confine them.
Elise Braun and Gilbert Myers, the Susan Sebastian Foundation grant administrator, used the book Healing Spaces:The Science of Place and Well-Being by DrEsther Sternberg to help define the parameters for purchasing the art. Each piece is meant to take the patient out of the hospital room and into the outdoors. In Elise Braun’s words, “It gets you thinking about getting out of the hospital. It makes you feel like you want to get better.” Gilbert Myers explained that the art “represents Vermont’s natural beauty and scenes that patients might recognize. It is intended to cheer them up.”
UVM Health Network - Central Vermont Medical Center has received 38 works of art from the Susan Sebastian Foundation to hang on the walls of 2 North & South and the Women and Children’s Unit. The estimated combined value of the diverse portfolio of artwork is about $20,000 and features work by celebrated Vermont artists Kathleen Kolb, Daryl Storrs, Sabra Field, Ed Epstein, Woody Jackson, Harald Aksdal, Jennine Lunn, Annalein Beukenkamp, Frank Woods, John Snell and Rory Jackson, among others. Their mediums include photographs, pastels, oil on paper, prints and watercolors.
The foundation’s purchases not only brighten the walls and lives of UVM Heath Network – Central Vermont Medical Center patients and employees, it has provided an economic boost for local artists as well.
This philanthropic endeavor by the Susan Sebastian Foundation (Williston) is undertaken quietly and without any requests for donations. The goal is to share with every hospital in Vermont. This hospital is forever grateful.
UVM Health Network – Central Vermont Medical Center President and CEO Judy Tartaglia thanked Gilbert Myers from the Susan Sebastian Foundation for their generous gift to UVMHN-CVMC patients and the central Vermont community at a reception held in the hospital gallery on Wednesday, July 22. The collection, purchased with grant funds, will be exhibited for a month before it is installed in patient rooms. (shown, right to left): Judy Tartaglia, President & CEO; Frank Woods, artist; Gilbert Myers, Susan Sebastian Foundation grant administrator; Harald Aksdal, artist; Ed Epstein, artist; and Maureen O’Connor Burgess, Marketing and Communications at CVMC.