ABOUT RxART CANADA
Founded in 2015, RxART Canada carries forward the mission of US-based RxART, transforming healthcare spaces with site-specific, museum-quality art.
While RxART Canada’s inaugural hospital installation in 2019 was a project with artist Julia Dault at Toronto’s SickKids that transformed the paediatric dental and orthodontic clinics into uplifting and colourful settings, today RxART Canada works in both adult and paediatric facilities across the country. Click here to learn more about RxART Canada’s upcoming projects and follow this link to request a project at your hospital.
"Hospital walls can be monotonous and boring. Or they can be full of vibrancy and hope, filled with a bounty of colours. The wonderful vista RxART Canada and Julia Dault created in the orthodontic waiting area [at SickKids] and the evocation of imagery of multicoloured balloons fills every onlooker with joy and optimism. It invites the child in all of us—patients, parents, and care providers—to jump in the pool of colourful balloons. It transforms our mundane wall into an inspiration."
— Sunjay Suri, DDS, Staff Orthodonist
The Hospital for Sick Children
OUR FOUNDER AND HISTORY
Diane Brown
Founder and President
Early in 2000, I found myself dressed in a hospital gown with an IV in my arm, going into a CT scan, feeling totally vulnerable and afraid. My only escape was through my imagination, and I instinctively summoned an artwork to occupy my thoughts. I imagined an installation by Matthew Ritchie going up the wall to my left and across the ceiling. I entered into Ritchie’s complex iconography, and only when the test was over, did I realize how art had helped me through this difficult experience.
Waiting for the technicians to remove the IV and help me off the table, I knew I wanted to help others “get out of the hospital,” if even for just a few minutes. Having spent the majority of my adult life working in the visual arts up to that point, I embarked on a mission to spread the healing power of art, and RxART was born.
About Diane
RxART Canada Founder and President Diane Brown has forged a professional path that draws equally from her experience as a pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin and from her career as a gallerist, art dealer, and curator. She owned and operated the Diane Brown Gallery in Washington D.C. between 1976-1982 and in New York City between 1983-1992. The gallery played host to some of the most significant artists of the time, exhibiting work by Louise Lawler, Allan McCollum, and Tony Oursler. Brown was also instrumental in launching careers of Mary Weatherford and Steve Wolfe, among others. After closing the gallery in 1992, Brown worked as a private dealer, the curator of a major corporate photography collection, and as an adjunct professor of arts administration at New York University. She founded RxART in 2000 and RxART Canada in 2015.