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The Fort Worth Art Dealers Association has recognized the Health Science Center’s contributions toward the community’s well being by unanimously voting the Atrium Gallery as one of its non-profit associate members. The Atrium Gallery, located on the first floor of the Education and Administration building, offers local works of art, illustrating the relationship and commonalities between art and medicine.

Now, the Health Science Center has an official spot on the association’s spring and fall Gallery Nights, when all cultural district galleries open their doors free of charge to the public.

"This will bring us a lot of visibility, and it will help us bring the public on campus to learn more about us," said Shea Patterson-Young, special events administrator for the Health Science Center and gallery curator.

Patterson-Young said the Health Science Center’s commitment to art extends to 1985, when the first high school art show launched. Now it’s the university’s longest running community outreach program.

"We are a place where art meets science," she said.

Just where the two mesh is difficult to define, but many artists and physicians agree that they are inseparable.

"Medicine has always had difficulty in defining its terrain, situated somewhere between the sciences and the humanities," said David Biro, MD, of the State University of New York Health Science Center Downstate and author of One Hundred Days: My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient. "The recent trend has been to accentuate its scientific underpinnings …."

While this trend has produced diagnostic and therapeutic dividends, "it has often exacerbated the suffering of patients by further alienating and isolating them," he said. "The arts serve as a powerful corrective to this trend, emphasizing the complexity of human experience and the needs of sick people over and above surgery and chemotherapy. The arts remind medicine of its humanistic origins in healing as it seeks to provide the most up-to-date scientific care for its patients."

This emphasis on humanism synchs well with osteopathic medicine’s focus on treating the whole patient.

"I feel like we have the best of both worlds at the Health Science Center," Patterson-Young said. "We are supporting groundbreaking research, medical education and clinical care; and we are located in a nationally recognized cultural district. It’s rewarding to be able to contribute to both pursuits."

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