“We want to take people away from the medicalized world and take them somewhere else.”
This ambition sits at the centre of the RSA200 Art for Health initiative. Entering its bicentennial year, the Royal Scottish Academy has opted against a static retrospective exhibition in Edinburgh. Instead the institution and hospital arts programmes across the nation have selected works from their collections and sent them out on the road.
Developed as a Scottish NHS Arts Partners Touring Exhibition, the project places twenty-first-century visual art directly into the daily eyeline of patients, visitors, and medical staff across Scotland.
The environment of a modern hospital is defined by clinical utility. For Amy Trantum, Collection Manager for Tonic Arts at NHS Lothian Charity and the RSA, the introduction of visual art serves as a necessary psychological alternative to that reality.
“It is like a little escape hatch,” she says of the installations. “Sometimes I think of it as going through the wardrobe into Narnia. You go down the corridor, and you have that escape hatch into another world.”
Curation and Colour: Moving Beyond Magnolia
The visual vocabulary of a hospital ward is notoriously muted. This touring exhibition, split into a Large Exhibition of twenty-four works and a Small Exhibition of eleven, aims to disrupt that aesthetic. The curation is anchored by four strict themes: identity, place, nature, and colour.
“Hospitals are not known for bright colours; there are a lot of magnolias and greys in the corridors,” observes Hans Clausen, who helped steer the project’s development. “We wanted to break that with colours that punch through, which became an important element.”
This drive for vibrancy required a specific approach to selecting the contemporary works. “Place relates to Scottishness, so there are many landscapes and seascapes with a distinct Scottish essence,” Clausen continues. “Regarding colour, we had conversations acknowledging that a beautiful Scottish seascape can often be a bit dreary, as that is sometimes the reality of the Scottish weather. We wanted to represent Scotland without relying entirely on grey skies.”
“It is like a little escape hatch,” she says of the installations. “Sometimes I think of it as going through the wardrobe into Narnia. You go down the corridor, and you have that escape hatch into another world.”
The green health agenda forms another primary pillar of the tour. By focusing on plants and flowers, the curatorial team actively brings the outdoors inside. Tonic Arts operates alongside the Green Health branch of the NHS Lothian Charity, making this thematic focus a natural extension of their broader healthcare approach.
The curation process itself was a major undertaking, drawing on input from six different arts organisations from six NHS regions. The teams convened in Edinburgh to hammer out the final list.
“We had a day together in November at Out of the Blue Drill Hall, where we physically brought together some of the collection works, and we also looked at work online to find the central thread of the exhibition,” Clausen notes.
“We had our own fairly large shortlist, and everyone else brought their shortlists as well,” Trantum adds. “We narrowed it down repeatedly, making it a slow process. We could have probably done an entire exhibition with our in-house shortlist alone! Putting it together with submissions from the other organisations was the real challenge.”
The resulting collection is deliberate in its representation. “We intentionally curated by committee, holding those four themes in mind,” Clausen says. “Once we did that, we paid attention to equality, diversity, and inclusion within a Scottish context. We considered the gender of the artists to ensure balance. As it happened, without too much shuffling around, we naturally arrived close to a 50/50 split, perhaps 60/40 leaning toward female artists. We also looked at whether the artists were born and trained in Scotland or came from other countries to train here. There is an international flavour to some of the artists and their work. It wasn’t our primary goal from the outset, but we paid attention to it, and the works we ended up selecting are fairly diverse.”
The Reality of Art in Healthcare Spaces
The true value of these exhibitions reveals itself far away from curatorial meetings, manifesting in the quiet, isolated moments of patient experience. Clausen witnessed this firsthand at St John’s Hospital in Livingston, situated beside NHS Lothian’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience. While measuring a gallery space with a colleague, he noticed a woman pacing the corridor, returning repeatedly to the installed artworks.
“It turned out she was there for her scan, having been diagnosed with a brain tumour,” Clausen recalls. “She comes in every three years for a checkup. She said whenever she comes to the hospital, she is so nervous and anxious, but the one thing she heads for is the gallery space. She looks for the art to calm her down.”
The effect was tangible. “You could almost physically see she was feeling calmer and safer while she was in the space with the art before she went up to the clinical space for her scan,” Clausen notes. The encounter yielded a secondary effect: the patient confided that, should her results be positive, she planned to start a painting course. “It had been a catalyst for her to find her own journey into art. In my experience, whenever we install or de-install exhibitions, and we are in the hospital for a day or two at a time, there are so many little conversations like that which are nuggets of why the art is important to people.”
Beyond patient solace, the art serves a highly functional purpose for the medical professionals navigating these vast campuses. Through the Tonic Arts art-on-request service, staff actively curate their own environments.
“We do an initial site visit and then provide options for them to pick from, so there are not too many choices, but enough that the staff can select for themselves, their visitors, and their patients,” Trantum explains. “The staff know the patients better than anyone else. It is nice to have them request it and be on board with what would work.”
The application of these artworks shifts depending on the clinical context. “Recently, we were on-site at the Royal Infirmary and went to a counselling room where sensitive, hard topics are discussed,” Trantum says. “The artwork in that room might look quite different from a corridor where you might want something bright and colourful to catch people’s eyes.”
The practical benefits extend into navigation and acute care. “It generally helps people find their way around complicated hospital corridors,” Trantum points out. “It also serves as a distraction when they are taking injections or blood; they can use a detailed piece of artwork to facilitate calming someone down. They use the artwork as a marker during rehabilitation on the corridor, saying, ‘We are going to reach this artwork next.'”
A Decade of Contemporary Focus
The decision to centre the RSA200 celebrations entirely on the twenty-first century marks a deliberate step away from archival nostalgia.
“We have thirteen artworks in the touring exhibition that we are providing, and all thirteen are 21st-century artworks,” Trantum confirms. “Many of them are from New Contemporaries or are Kinross Award winners.”
This contemporary lean reflects a long-standing relationship between the NHS and the Academy. The launch of the touring exhibition coincides perfectly with a major internal milestone. “The RSA has managed the Tonic Arts collection management contract since 2016,” Trantum notes. “So, 2026 is our tenth anniversary of managing the contract, which is nice.”
Clausen sees this enduring partnership as central to the Academy’s identity. “One of the things I think the RSA does brilliantly is celebrate emerging artists through the New Contemporaries annual exhibition, the RSA Open, and other opportunities,” he says. “Being in partnership with the RSA is important to celebrate new emerging artists and the groundbreaking work of young Scottish artists.”
The curation integrates freshly minted talent alongside established names. “We have a commission finished in 2025 called Gather by Cecily Preswell,” Trantum details. “It was inspired by a work exhibited at the RSA Annual the previous year and centres around community, which is a perfect representation.” These newer acquisitions, some from artists who graduated mere years ago, hang alongside works by recognised figures like Toby Paterson and Jo Ganter.
The sheer volume of engagement these works will receive dwarfs many traditional gallery runs. The corridor gallery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh alone commands massive daily traffic. “We are looking at 400 people a day going past that artwork,” Clausen calculates. “Multiply that by three months. The RSA and its artists are being seen by a population that might never step through the doors of a gallery. It gives a completely different showcase to the artwork, bringing it into hospitals rather than hanging it in a traditional gallery.”
Cross-Pollination and Regional Collaboration
Executing a tour of this magnitude required forcing six distinct regional entities into a unified operational framework. OutPost Arts, Artlink Central, Art in Healthcare, Tonic Arts, Grampian Hospitals Art Trust, and Tayside Healthcare Arts Trust all brought different institutional habits to the table.
“The logistics of bringing six different arts organisations from six different NHS regions together… you can imagine the differences and the conflicts,” Clausen admits. “Simple things like how you hang a picture on the wall: how we do it in Edinburgh is different from how they do it in Glasgow. What fixings does a frame need? Regarding fire regulations, what glazing does a frame need?”
The initial enthusiasm quickly met the reality of cross-regional bureaucracy. “Very early on, there was an excitement that we all came together. This is a new, ambitious project,” Clausen notes. “But then we very quickly realised there are all these little moving parts that are going to be hard work. That has been the bulk of the work, just finding a level playing field for all of the different organisations to work towards.”
This is where the administrative weight of the Royal Scottish Academy proved essential. “We can do a lot through the RSA because there are complications with the NHS in terms of procurement and administration,” Trantum explains. “Through the RSA, we can get jobs done and meet art requests much faster because of their general system. It frees us up to do awards… Being so connected to the RSA, it is great to have an influx of new artists and new types of art coming in.”
For Trantum, the collaboration highlighted the unique demands of working in healthcare arts. “Bringing us together to share the difficulties of working in a healthcare setting has been beneficial,” she says. “I have heard that going to conferences makes it easier for people who are academic or working in museums, whereas working in healthcare, specifically within an art context, is more unique. It is nice to meet people who do that specific role, understand each other’s challenges, and meet more people.”
Crucially, the friction of organising the tour has forged a new network among the regions. “Collaborating has meant a few of them have been into our store to see how we store things, because we are all quite different, and that has been really good as well,” Trantum says. The legacy of this project is already secured in future policy. “There is a plan in place—especially for collections management—to do a meetup every six months, potentially, so we can carry on sharing. We can discuss what has worked for us and what we are doing at the moment in our arts program.”
The Physical Experience and the Tour’s Legacy
In an era where cultural institutions often default to digital dissemination, the Scottish Healthcare Collective demanded a physical tour. The works are currently moving through venues across the country, from the Bellfield Centre in Stirling to the Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary.
“We decided it needed to benefit the people physically in the hospital,” Trantum insists. “If it were online, it would reach a different audience. It is fantastic that it will be shown in the hospital exhibition galleries.”
Clausen agrees. “When an artist spends time putting paint on canvas or printing on a silkscreen, there are times when digital representation is fine, but actually going to the trouble of wrapping it up, putting it in a van, and touring the country so it can be seen in person is important,” he argues. “We have made this a physical experience that people can appreciate across eight different venues in Scotland. It is an old-fashioned approach—driving paintings around in a van—but it feels incredibly worthwhile.”
Because of the clinical environment, standard art world protocols have to be adjusted. “It is always difficult to have a traditional exhibition launch in a hospital because the hospital is working 24/7,” Clausen points out. “To have all of us standing around with a glass of apple juice while patients get trollied past is incongruous. However, we agreed that we need to do something to celebrate and promote this achievement. The plan is that halfway through the 12-month run, we will host an event at the RSA, perhaps a mini-symposium, where we invite the featured artists, organisations, and third parties.”
Trantum views this tour not as an endpoint, but as a proving ground for the collection’s future. “Even now, I am thinking about where the pieces will go once they return. Some of the works are part of a larger series; we might have a group of five related pieces. This exhibition will give us feedback, and when the art returns, we can find a great permanent placement for it on the wards.”
When I suggest that there is no substitute for experiencing a piece of art in person—that putting it on the road gives people no choice but to encounter it for at least a second—Clausen points out that this physical proximity is just the beginning.
The corridor gallery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh alone commands massive daily traffic. “We are looking at 400 people a day going past that artwork,” Clausen calculates. “Multiply that by three months. The RSA and its artists are being seen by a population that might never step through the doors of a gallery. It gives a completely different showcase to the artwork, bringing it into hospitals rather than hanging it in a traditional gallery.”
“That brings us to the 12-month run,” he says. “In some ways, after Monday, we can breathe a sigh of relief that it is up on the wall and looks good. But that is when the real work begins in terms of capturing people’s responses. We have a great opportunity to conduct research and evaluation to see how this work impacts people in different hospitals across the country.”
The presence of RSA200 Art for Health in these spaces works primarily because it offers a contrast to clinical life. There is a frequent assumption that hospital art must necessarily reflect the hospital itself, an idea Clausen is quick to dismiss.
“The fascinating thing is that we get approached by artists or people in the hospital with ideas for exhibitions or commissions, and often they will be medically related,” he reveals. “We receive proposals for health-themed exhibitions, which we sometimes host. But… we want to take people away from the medicalised world and take them somewhere else.”
In an age when the practical utility of art has never been under greater scrutiny, this is art in action. To borrow a little inspiration from a fellow Edinburgher, one Arthur Conan Doyle, bringing art into hospitals is to bring something ‘extra’ into an environment otherwise built upon necessity. Its colour and beauty are “an embellishment of life, not a condition of it.” If only one visitor finds solace or hope in the exhibitions popping up throughout the country’s hospital corridors, it will prove an act of surpassing good.
Featured Image: NHS Staff admiring a Tonic Arts exhibition – (c) Tonic Arts
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