Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
City Hospital
Alice Neel American
Not on view
In this drawing Neel’s mother (also seen in the painting titled Last Sickness), visible in the center foreground is portrayed the year she died. The densely packed space filled with ailing bodies harks back to Neel’s own experiences in hospital wards, depicted in other works in this gallery. Two nurses of color tend to the patients; they quietly weave their way through the crammed beds and people who ignore their presence. One looks with sympathy toward the elder Alice Neel, whose frail and hunched body is framed by the turned backs of visitors at her neighbor’s bedside, highlighting the isolation of her end-of-life existence.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
