Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Well Baby Clinic
Alice Neel American
Not on view
Among many other strengths, Neel excelled at visualizing the emotional and physical struggles of women, especially poor women, herself included. Well Baby Clinic, one of the artist’s most operatic, expressionistic works, is set in the hospital where Neel gave birth on November 24, 1928, among dozens of other lower-class women. Neel and her second daughter, Isabetta, appear at the far middle right, a moment of serenity and peace in a sea of human misery and ruin. Ugly, misshapen babies squirm while their mothers, deformed by fear and privation, fall to pieces before the viewer’s eyes. In an account written shortly before she began work on Well Baby Clinic, Neel openly expressed her horror at what she experienced in the maternity ward, which she called "a very dismal place."
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