Art Collection at Cedars-Sinai
The art collection at Cedars-Sinai, a remarkable assemblage of more than 4,000 paintings, sculptures, photos, drawings and lithographs, was born in a quiet moment of healing.
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It was 1966 and Frederick R. Weisman, a Los Angeles business leader and art lover, had slipped into a coma after suffering a head injury. Though he returned to consciousness after several days in the hospital, he remained dazed and disoriented. His wife, Marcia Simon Weisman, who was also an influential art collector, grew alarmed as her husband struggled to remember her name.
In an effort to stimulate his memory, Mrs. Weisman decided to enlist the couple’s prized private art collection. "As the story goes, Marcia would bring pieces to the hospital and leave them by her husband's bedside so that he would see them when he opened his eyes," says John T. Lange, curator of the Cedars-Sinai art collection.
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One morning, Frederick Weisman was looking at an abstract painting his wife had brought in, admiring its jagged lines and trademark dripped colors, when he had a breakthrough: He recognized the artist as Jackson Pollock, and to his wife’s delight, named him aloud.
"He could make that connection to the work of art before he could make the connection to identify his wife," Lange said of Weisman's first step toward healing. "There was an obvious relationship between the art and his recovery."
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In 1976, when the expansion of the medical center was completed, the Weismans returned to tour the new facility. Avid collectors of modern art since their first 1950s purchase (Jean Arp's polished bronze sculpture Self-Absorbed) the couple was intent on bringing art to Cedars-Sinai.
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"They walked around and saw all of these empty corridors," Lange said. "So they made a huge push to add art to the medical center."
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The couple began by donating hundreds of pieces from their own notable holdings; works by pop artists Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol; abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Frank Stella and Willem de Kooning; surrealists such as Max Ernst, Joan Miró and René Magritte; and European modernists including Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky.
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Marcia Weisman became passionate about the idea of filling the hospital with great works. She urged everyone she knew in the art community to donate — gallery owners, art buyers, grateful patients, and even the artists themselves. "She was out there pounding the pavement," Lange said. "She started this tradition of giving art to the hospital."
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Today, the Advisory Council for the Arts (ACA) comprised of fine art aficionados and art professionals — many who knew the Weismans personally — continues their mission. Together the group reviews every work offered to the medical center, aware of keeping true to the couple’s singular vision.