Art Program

The Art Program for UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay

UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is committed to integrating art into the fabric of the new children’s, women’s specialty and cancer hospitals. We are creating a comprehensive art program that will exemplify UCSF’s preeminence in advancing health worldwide and will enhance the healing environment of our facilities. In keeping with the vision set for art at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, one percent of the hospital project construction budget is allocated to art for the hospitals. The UCSF Mission Bay and Parnassus Campus Art Collections have been used as a resource and model for the potential for art in UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay.

Guiding Principles

The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay will be a welcoming, warm, and healing environment providing the highest quality care integrated with world-class and cutting-edge clinical and research programs. Art will support the overall mission: "caring, healing, teaching, discovering". The art will enhance the patient, staff and faculty experience; will be of the highest quality; interdisciplinary and experimental; and will connect people to each other and their environment. Our art program will be innovative, become a destination, be a tribute to the legacy of UCSF, and serve as a promise to the future.

The Art Program of UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay shall:

Exemplify UCSF’s worldwide preeminence in advancing health;
Enhance the healing environment by inspiring trust and renewal, creating diversion, and inviting engagement;
Evoke a sense of wonder and delight in people of all ages;
Celebrate and embrace the variety of human experience and the power of the human spirit;
Achieve excellence in artistic expression, creativity and experimentation, with clarity and a sense of scale; and
Reflect a rich diversity of media, creators, beholders, cultures and perspectives.

Selecting Art

UCSF has established a process whereby art can be acquired and commissioned in a way that assures the highest quality and includes a broad representation of UCSF staff, faculty, patients and the surrounding community.

A small UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Art Advisory Board, consisting of expert and highly recognized art professionals with an understanding of health care environments, will identify artists, review art proposals and make recommendations to the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Art Committee.
The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Art Committee broadly represents the staff, faculty, friends and patients of the new medical center, as well as the surrounding communities of Dogpatch, Potrero Hill and Mission Bay. This Committee will review the recommendations of the Art Advisory Board, and make final recommendations to the CEO of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.
The art acquisition process will be coordinated by the art consultanting firm of Lynne Baer + Art Projects, www.baerartprojects.com , working with the Art Advisory Board and Art Committee, UCSF Medical Center Administration and Facilities Management staff and the design team. The consultant's work is to develop and implement the art program, including artist visits, proposal development, feasibility review, and presentations to the Art Advisory Board, Art Committee and UCSF administration. The consultant works with all parties to implement the acquisition, commissioning, construction and installation of artwork.

Temporary Art Project for Construction Site Fence

Artist Liz Hickok's mural, San Francisco in Jell-O series, is installed on the hospital construction site fence along Mariposa Street, from 4th to 3rd, Wednesday, July 6. It’s a vibrant, dynamic and uplifting photographic mural depicting different icons from the city of San Francisco recreated out of Jell-O. This mural is one of four distinct artworks commissioned by UCSF Medical Center as part of its community-based art project – a comprehensive endeavor to create a world-class art program for the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay – the 289-bed children’s, women’s specialty and cancer hospital complex currently under construction and scheduled to open in February 2015. The fence art project entails the installation of art murals on the construction site fences along 16th, 3rd, and Mariposa Streets starting July 6, 2011. The artwork will remain until the new hospitals open. Artists from the Bay Area have been commissioned to beautify the construction site; help identify the new hospitals; and trumpet the significance of the emerging UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay to passersby. The artists will engage the surrounding communities in the creation of the art, as well as involve members of the UCSF faculty, staff and student body, and medical center patients. It’s also hoped that the murals will perpetuate the excitement and support for establishing the permanent art program. You may download a full summary of all four artists commissioned for the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay fence project.

Art Master Plan

There is an Art Master Plan that serves as a road map for the selection and installation of art at the new children’s, women’s specialty, and cancer hospital complex at Mission Bay. The Art Master Plan has been developed by art consultants Lynne Baer and Mathieu Gregoire, and the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Art Committee, with input from Stantec Architecture (formerly Anshen + Allen), the landscape architects, EDAW AECOM, staff and faculty from each of the hospitals as well as engineers and experts involved in the construction process.

The UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Art Committee provided insight and guidance throughout the planning process, and will continue to act on the recommendations of the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay Art Advisory Board. The plan outlines the process for the selection of art, patient and community involvement, funding, a description of the physical plan, and the schedule and priorities for the placement of art in the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay. It is a living document that may be revised by the Art Committee.

Artist Inquiries should be directed to:

Lynne Baer
lynne@baerartprojects.com