The End of Life: A Multicultural Interdisciplinary Experience

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April 12-May 8, 2011

William Morris Hunt [American, 1824-1879], Our Sick Soldier, lithograph, 1863. Robert S. and Naomi C. Dennison Fund.
William Morris Hunt [American, 1824-1879], Our Sick Soldier, lithograph, 1863. Robert S. and Naomi C. Dennison Fund.
George Bellows, American, 1882-1925, Death of Edith Cavell, lithograph, 1918. Louise Crombie Beach Memorial Collection.
George Bellows, American, 1882-1925, Death of Edith Cavell, lithograph, 1918. Louise Crombie Beach Memorial Collection.

Death and dying are the subjects of this small out-of-the-ordinary exhibition of works from the Benton collections. Featured works are George Bellows’ 1918 lithograph, Death of Edith Cavell, and William Morris Hunt’s Our Sick Soldier.

The Bellows work depicts the moments before German soldiers execute a nurse who operated a hospital for wounded soldiers fighting the Germans during World War I. Our Sick Solider is a charming Civil War period print that portrays two little girls pretending to play nurse to their wounded Union soldier doll.

This exhibition was created in support of a Nursing School course, The End of Life: A Multicultural Interdisciplinary Experience, taught by Thomas Lawrence Long, PhD, Associate Professor-in-Residence. The course focuses on issues related to end-of-life care and planning, death and dying in different cultures, and different forms of cultural production, including grave art and architecture, visual arts, literature.