Collected Memory.
“The purpose is to connect the existing Maitland Hospital to the new Maitland Hospital through artworks, images, stories, displays and other forms; to create lasting connections with the community they serve; and to install creative works that offer welcome distraction, provide health benefits for patients and soften the clinical environment. ”
In late 2019 NSW Health Infrastructure, Hunter New England Local Health District and Maitland City Council created the Collected Memory Project. Consultants engaged for the project were Joe Eisenberg OAM, Cultural Director Emeritus, Maitland City Council, and founding director Maitland Regional Art Gallery, and public historian, Dr Janis Wilton OAM, Adjunct Assoc. Professor in History at the University of New England.
An advisory Arts Working Group was established for the project. It included representatives from the three participating organisations as well as from the community and from Maitland Hospital.
The purpose of the project was to mark Maitland Hospital’s transition to a new site and new building by documenting, sharing and celebrating its long history through art, displays and community engagement.
Maitland Hospital Collection
The first task was to identify items from across the hospital that documented and evoked stories about the hospital’s long history. Identifying, cleaning, photographing, researching and cataloguing were key tasks. Well over 400 items were catalogued. An initial significance assessment was done.
Items from the collection are used to illustrate many of the hospital stories shared on this website.
Exhibition
The stories and insights that emerged from working with the collection highlighted the significance of the Maitland Hospital High Street site and the significance and complexity of the health services delivered by the hospital for over 170 years. Community responses also indicated the depth of local attachment to, and memories of, the hospital.
It was fitting that, as a companion to Collected Memory, the Maitland Regional Art Gallery should host an exhibition about the hospital: it provided an opportunity to invite artists to respond to the site and the hospital stories, and to invite members of the community to further share their stories as well as to engage with items from the hospital collection and with the artists’ creative works. It also provided another means to mark the transition from the old to the new hospital.
The exhibition was curated jointly by the Collected Memory consultants and Cheryl Farrell, the Gallery’s Collection Curator. Ten artists were invited to create artworks in response to visits to the hospital, encounters with - and sometimes use of - items from the hospital, and engagement with the research and stories about the hospital. The result was the exhibition A Conspicuous Object - The Maitland Hospital.
A Conspicuous Object - The Maitland Hospital (exhibition detail), Maitland Regional Art Gallery, 16 Oct 2021 to 6 Feb 2022.
Visit Exhibition to view a video of the curators talking about the exhibition, to follow the links to the stories about the works created by each of the artists, and to access public program resources.
Website
This website was conceived as a means to collect and share stories and information about the history of the hospital, and about the Collected Memory Project. Developed in late 2020 and early 2021 and authored by Janis Wilton, it was first published in April 2021 with stories and material updated as they were researched and shared. Its content draws on the consultants’ work on the hospital collection, on their ongoing research into the history of the hospital, and on the memories, photographs and memorabilia generously shared by hospital staff and community members. It also provides a permanent record of the exhibition and its artworks.
The end result is an online conversation that links art, history and heritage. It invites viewers to discover different perspectives and stories on the hospital, its role in the community and as a long-serving example of a public hospital in regional New South Wales, and the ways in which those stories and perspectives informed the work of artists and the nature of the art and history interpretive displays now in the new Maitland Hospital.
The Stories section includes pieces on the old Maitland Hospital site and its jigsaw of buildings acquired over time; stories and memories of past and present hospital staff; family connections with the institution; items from the hospital collection and the stories they evoke; events in the hospital’s history; reflective accounts of the work created by each of the artists for the exhibition; photographic essays on departments in the hospital during its last year on the old site; and interpretive explorations of the art and history displays in the new Maitland Hospital. The bulk of the stories were first published during 2021 and early 2022. Updating existing stories and adding new ones will continue.
History and art in the new Maitland Hospital
NSW Health recognises the therapeutic benefits of art, in all its forms, in healthcare environments. For the new Maitland Hospital this awareness was incorporated into the architectural design and overall planning of the new building and its facilities.
The Collected Memory Project was responsible for realising aspects of this planning. In particular the project facilitated the commissioning of a major artwork for the hospital foyer, and worked with artists and with the Maitland Hospital Collection to create a series of displays that invited conversations between history, art and community memories.
Peter Poulet’s Story Drifts
The new hospital’s foyer was designed with a large space allocated to an artwork. The space is 4.2 metres high and 45 metres in length with the length in a U-shape. It is located 3.2 metres from the floor, above the heads of people.
Peter Poulet was awarded the commission to paint the walls. He spent time engaging with the history of the hospital and Maitland, and with memories shared by community members. He painted directly on to the walls from a two-tiered scaffolding.
The foyer of the new Maitland Hospital showing a section of Peter Poulet’s Story Drifts wall painting, November 2021.
Visit Drawing memories to see the artworks Peter Poulet created in response to hearing memories shared by community members.
Visit Time lapse of Peter Poulet mural to see the wall painting as it was created.
Watch the video below, New Maitland Hospital - ‘Story Drifts’, to see and hear Peter Poulet talking about the process and his art work.
Timeline, art and history
In the main corridor of the new Maitland Hospital, a section was allocated for a display case for items and stories from the Maitland Hospital Collection. This eventually morphed into a set of five display vitrines embedded in a timeline.
The timeline tracks the growth of the hospital over time as new buildings were added to provide for a growing population and increasingly diverse services. The vitrines provide spaces for changing displays about the hospital.
For the opening of the hospital, themed displays were created. These combined items and stories from the hospital collection with artworks created by some of the artists who participated in the Conspicuous Object exhibition.
Section of the timeline in the new Maitland Hospital, January 2022.
Visit A new timeline for more details and images about the timeline and the displays created for the vitrines.
Image wait space
In the Image wait space on the ground floor of the hospital, there are eight prints created from mid-twentieth century photoengraving blocks held in the Maitland Hospital Collection. These evoke particular moments in the hospital’s history. They also illustrate old technologies used for printing images.
Part of the display in the Image wait space, January 2022.
For more details visit Printing from blocks and Imaging prints.
Outpatients’ wait spaces
There are three separate outpatients’ waiting areas on the ground floor. In each of these spaces are copies of photographs from the Maitland Hospital Collection. The photographs capture moments of waiting and posing, and are enlivened with quotes made at the time the photographs were taken or from memories triggered by viewing the photographs.
One of the Outpatients’ wait spaces, January 2022.
Visit We’re waiting with you for more details about each of the photographs on display.
Lift lobbies
The walls opposite the lifts for public use are fitted with hanging rails. For the opening of the new hospital, Collected Memory curated a selection of images for Levels 2, 3 and 4. These are drawn from the hospital collection, a private collection and from photographs taken by Catharine Neilson of the hospital during its last eighteen months on the High Street site.
The displays will be installed some time in 2022.
Artworks
Some of the artworks from the exhibition A Conspicuous Object were acquired by NSW Health and now hang in different parts of the new Maitland Hospital.
Peter O’Doherty, paintings of the old Maitland Hospital site, in situ outside the lecture theatre in the new Maitland Hospital.
For details about Peter O’Doherty’s paintings visit Facelifts, rebuilds, additions and adaptions.
G. W. Bot, Celestial Poet, 2021
linocut on tapa cloth and Korean Hanji paper
133.5 x 63 cm (irregular)
Celestial Poet is in the waiting room next to the hospital mortuary.
To learn more details about G. W. Bot’s work visit It all takes place in the garden.
Lesley Salem, Birthing at Maitland Hospital, 2021
acrylic on canvas
dot and brush technique
92 x 122 cm
Birthing at Maitland Hospital is in the maternity section of the new Maitland Hospital.
For more details about the artwork visit Birthing at Maitland Hospital.
First posted” 25 January 2022
Updated: 28 March 2022