Mount Sinai Health System nurses are getting an artful tribute with a traveling exhibit of portraits. The 46 paintings by Rebecca Moses are currently on display through Dec. 20 in the Guggenheim Pavilion of Mount Sinai Hospital on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The exhibit’s name says it all: “Thank You, Mount Sinai Nurses.”
“The reaction from nurses and doctors has been extraordinarily positive. The Mount Sinai community has expressed gratitude for this unique way of acknowledging the essential contributions and achievements of Mount Sinai Nurses,” said Linda Valentino, the system’s vice president of nursing and patient care for women’s and children’s services.
The exhibit was the brainchild of Valentino, Moses and Linda Levy, president of the Fragrance Foundation. In conjunction with the exhibit, the Fragrance Foundation is donating thousands of fragrance and beauty products to Mount Sinai nurses.
The exhibit is also a recognition of 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, declared by the World Health Organization. “To have all of our nurses traumatized in the Year of the Nurse and not do anything about it, it was literally keeping me up at night,” Valentino told the New York Times.
“The nurses portrayed were selected by a process of peer nomination, and participation was voluntary,” Valentino said. Each nurse will receive a print of her portrait.
The exhibit, designed and installed pro bono by architect George Ranalli, will travel to Mount Sinai’s seven other locations in the coming months.
