States of Health: Visualizing Illness and Healing

Throughout history and across cultures, concepts of illness and healing have been given concrete form through art. States of Health features over eighty works of globe-spanning art, from antiquity to the present—including paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs, and multimedia—that collectively illuminate the role that art plays in shaping our perceptions and experiences of illness and healing. Provocative cross-cultural juxtapositions throughout the exhibition consider both broad issues and specific historical events, such as the bubonic plague and the AIDS crisis, from a visual perspective. Functioning variously as document, metaphor, fantasy, protest, invocation, and testimony, the selected works of art examine societal anxiety around pandemics and infectious disease, respond to mental illness, present the hopes and dangers associated with childbirth, and explore the complexities of care.