Her Artwork Brightens up the Sick

When her husband was a chemo patient at Penn’s hospital, artist Joan Myerson Shrager (C’60) used her talent to brighten things up.

Per Joan,

“At the time my husband was a chemo patient (for 11 years) the walls [of the hospital] were bare and unpainted. The environment was so dingy for patients undergoing such a demoralizing procedure I wanted to brighten it up. Patients and nurses told me they loved seeing the art.”

Since then she donated approximately 20 framed computer prints to the medical building where chemo patients are under treatment. Her digital art is in the permanent collection of the University and hanging in a permanent exhibition at GSE.

Further, Joan is a founder and director of ArtForms Gallery Manayunk for 12 years (an artist-run cooperative gallery) and worked with hundreds of local and national artists to curate and create community outreach exhibitions. She is now working with the Temple Judea Museum of Keneseth Israel to curate and assist with a yearly calendar of exhibitions. She also creates ongoing art projects for the synagogue and volunteers as an art teacher of inner city teenagers in conjunction with an after school program run by the Methodist Church.