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With a ribbon cutting on April 25, 2025, UVA Health unveiled Cancer Care Pantops — supporting our strategic plan initiatives including superior quality, patient safety, and outcomes; and easy access and experience of care — and brightening the days of patients, caregivers, guests, and team members with more than six dozen pieces of stellar art at the 652 Peter Jefferson Parkway, Suite 310, Charlottesville, Virginia location. See a sampling below.

Creating a Story

Anne B. Brown, Arts Program Coordinator, UVA Health University Medical Center, led the project to find, acquire, transport, and install 75 pieces throughout the 22,000 square feet of the third floor which includes: 14 exam rooms, 25 infusion chairs (expanding to a total of 40 by the end of 2025), three workrooms — and a main lobby, registration area, staff break room, and hallways.

In October 2024, the UVA Health Arts Committee placed a call for artists and galleries. By January 2025, creatives from Mid to South Atlantic states submitted more than 900 individual pieces for consideration!

Brown says UVA Health Arts Committee and UVA Health Cancer Care Pantops stakeholders chose an art theme that focuses on serene, peaceful pieces that evoke a spa-like feeling. “I wanted very much to find art that would allow our patients to get lost in the story of the art — or to create their own story.”

Brown calls the project a huge undertaking, but of course — one that is more than worth the effort. “I believe the artwork will inspire and enrich the lives of our patients, caregivers, guests, and team members. It is really beautiful! I love that the arts at UVA Health is taking on a level of importance that I’d only dreamed about!”

‘A Sacred Place’

Brown adds that every piece is so special, it wasn’t easy to single out one to be spotlighted in the main lobby. The art chosen: “Great & Ones That Got Away” by Fredericksburg, Virginia artist Patte Ormsby. In this slideshow, go behind the scenes with Ormsby to see how the art was made.

“I am profoundly honored with grateful hope that my painting will be seen and felt by all who enter their doors. May this painting take them to a place of comfort and healing, as it has for me,” posts Ormsby. 

‘New Forms of Kinship’

Other standouts include four “playful, childish, and joyful” pieces by Emiliie Gossiaux: “Butterfly With Torch Flowers,” “Flowers for London,” “Greenhouse Flowers,” and “Hot Magenta Flowers.” The multidisciplinary artist, who is blind, is based in New York City. She earned a BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and an MFA from Yale School of Art:

“Having lost her vision in 2010 as the result of a tragic accident, Emilie Gossiaux … learned to translate images in her mind using hand-to-hand, rather than eye-to-hand coordination. Today, her drawings are guided by tactile sensation. Using ballpoint pen and crayon to feel her lines as she works, she creates images that illuminate the natural world from her memory, dreams, and imagination. Her work illustrates that physical and imaginary walls cannot delineate nature and wildlife from our day-to-day existence.”

“Using playful marks and bright colors, her images create a visceral sensory experience for the viewer that brings us closer to both our natural surroundings and the artist’s experience of the world. In doing so, new forms of kinship and ways of relating to each other emerge as central to Gossiaux’s work.”

‘Even When You are Lost’

Originally from the North Shore of Boston, abstract landscape painter Christen Borgman Yates is a UVA alum who then completed graduate studies in theology, art, and sustainable development in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since moving back to Virginia in 2014, her works have been exhibited locally and across the country.

On display at UVA Health Cancer Care Pantops are three of her oil paintings, all incorporating non-toxic and earth pigments: “The Land Knows You, even when you are lost,“ "I want to dance” and “The ways of water.”

The installation is a personal one for Yates, herself a cancer survivor who was treated at UVA Health Breast Care Center in 2021 for early stage breast cancer and says she continues to “receive wonderful care and checkups” from the team.

“It is deeply moving and a full circle moment to see these pieces find a home in a place that was a significant part of my own healing,” she explains. “The act of painting for me is a process that reconnects me with myself, the land, and the transcendental; I hope viewers will experience some of those same reconnections.”

‘She Is Constantly With Me’

James Adam Reinhard is also a UVA alum. While attending the University as a Jefferson Scholar, he traveled to several European countries on two grants to paint architecture. After a fifth year at UVA as an Aunspaugh Fellow, Reinhard was accepted as a Presidential Scholar at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) — earning an MFA in painting. Then, while working on his master of arts in teaching (MAT) from Hollins University, he earned his Virginia teaching license, then taught middle and high school art for five years in Washington, D.C. He’s been teaching art at Western Albemarle High School for three years, and painting landscapes of the stunning views in Crozet and surrounding Albemarle County.

Three of Reinhard’s oil on canvas works adorn the walls of UVA Health Cancer Care Pantops: Ketchikan (right), Red Barn (below) and Shenandoah Creek. “I enjoy painting nature, because it never ceases to bring me to my knees with its beauty, and I hope I can capture even a fraction of that — and bring it indoors.” 

The installation is also personal for Reinhard: his sister, also a UVA alum who also became a teacher, passed away in 2019, after a battle with Ewing Sarcoma. She was treated at UVA Cancer Center, where Reinhard says her medical team “gave her the best possible care, which I believe ultimately led to 18 more months of life she received with her family after a stage four diagnosis.”

“Her doctors and nurses treated her like family,” he recalls. “Her time living with cancer was difficult, but every moment she spent getting treated at UVA Health led to more moments with her family outside the hospital. I cherish the memories I made with her during her times of treatment in Charlottesville.” 

“I think it is hard to overstate how much influence losing a loved one has on every decision you make for the rest of your life. She is constantly with me, and I find myself wondering what she would think about seeing my artwork at UVA Health in what could’ve been one of her treatment rooms. She would be supportive.”

He adds: “I appreciate the support of UVA Health and hope that my paintings bring a little bit of peace and calm to the patients, caregivers, and visitors who spend time there.”