Med Center Art for the Masses

Duke's Medical Center is consistently named one of the best health care facilities in the country. But an art gallery? In the Med Center?

Pre-meds and artsy fartsies alike will enjoy what the Center for the Study of Medical Ethics and Humanities is doing to bridge the gap between science and the humanities. In this clean new office in the bottom of the Medical Library hang rotating photography exhibitions artisticly depicting different aspects of the medical world. Starting last Tuesday and until Sept. 10 Meryl Levin's insightful Beyond the Emergency Room: The Search for Health Care in the South Bronx will hang on the CSMEH's walls.

A lifelong health care activist and freelance photographer, Levin set out to document the realities of the health care system for people living in poor urban communities in the United States. She did so by interviewing and photographing eight subjects for periods ranging from four months to two years. Four of these stories are on display at the CSMEH: a single mother of four living with AIDS; a teenage couple with their first child; a recovering drug addict who was paralyzed from the waist down in a shooting10 years ago; and a woman in the final four months of AIDS-infected life.

"Oftentimes it is embarassing for mainstream America to see these photos and hears these stories. They think, Onot in my backyard,'" said Levin of the impact of her work.

Though the photographs powerfully put the viewer face to face with the subjects, it is the accompanying writing that leaves the greatest impression. Levin's documentary writing is coupled with the patients' own words about their condition, recorded during interviews with Levin.

Although it seems like a far-away land, the Medical Center has more to offer than meets the eye. Plus, you can catch a ride there on the center's monorail. Yes, there is a monorail!