Art that heals

St. Paul member Anna Villareal has built a career placing art where people need it most—and she’s bringing that work home to share with the St. Paul community later this month.

Anna grew up moving. Wisconsin. North Carolina. Different cities, different schools, the particular disorientation of being the new kid more than once. But wherever the Mullen family landed, there were museums—and museums, Anna discovered early, were always the same.

“My parents were so good at taking us to museums on vacation,” Anna said. “When you walk into a museum, you’re learning so much that’s new and unknown, but there are rules and regulations to museums. They were reliable in a very physical way. They were comfortable.”

That comfort became a calling. Anna studied anthropology and history at Iowa State University, eventually earning a graduate degree in historical and museum studies from Eastern Illinois University in 2013.

Not quite the museum atmosphere she thought she’d find herself in, Anna is now the collections coordinator for University of Iowa (UI) Health Care. In her role, Anna oversees a permanent art collection of more than 7,000 pieces spread across the corridors, waiting rooms, clinics and specialized units of one of the largest academic medical centers in the country.

Project Art, the program that makes the collection possible, is approaching its 50th anniversary, making it one of the oldest hospital art programs in the nation. The program began with a simple vision—that art could humanize the hospital experience—and grew into a model recognized as one of the best examples of a hospital art collection in the country.

A typical day is harder to define than you might expect. Some mornings, Anna is cataloguing acquisitions in the department’s collections database. One of her goals is to make the entire collection publicly accessible online, so bed-bound patients, or people who have never set foot in the hospital, can explore it from anywhere.

Other days look entirely different. She’s one of a three person team responsible for all of the art in the hospital. Today, she may dust cases or whip out her handy paint pens to touch up frames dinged by cart traffic in the corridors. Her small team recently spent a week installing original and poster art across two previously unused floors of the Stead Family Children’s Hospital, opening soon as an expansion of the neonatal intensive care unit.

The collection operates under a state law that sets aside a portion of public construction budgets for art whenever a public space is built or renovated, meaning it grows organically alongside the hospital itself. Every addition is considered carefully—because every piece, once placed, becomes part of someone’s experience.

“Thoughtfulness is at the forefront. Project Art is umbrellaed under the office of the patient experience. It helps us keep that perspective in everything we do. Everyone is so passionate about connecting people with art. It’s a personal pride for us that it shows in our work,” Anna said. “We talk a lot about maintaining the diversity of the artwork and collection. Every patient, staff member and family member comes at the art from a different perspective. The wide range meets the needs. That’s why it’s called a working collection.”

UI Health Care serves patients from all 99 Iowa counties and beyond. For many, a trip to Iowa City means a long drive, a full day, sometimes weeks or months of treatment. The art becomes part of the rhythm of those visits.

One of Anna’s favorite pieces is Where The Lantern Light Leads, a collage by artist Angie Pickman. At first glance, it reads as a whimsical cut-paper scene—animals on a journey, rendered in warm, storybook detail. Look closer and you realize the paper is made from maps. Maps of Iowa.

“It’s a piece you can notice something different about every time you pass it. People notice the maps—can I find I-80? Can I find Cedar Rapids? Aesthetically, it’s great to look at, but there are also these intentional layers for repeat visiting, contemplation, and storytelling.”

She is equally passionate about the department’s Art and Illness series—a rotating exhibition featuring artists who live with chronic health conditions. The first featured Dylan Mortimer, a cystic fibrosis patient whose glitter-based work depicts the branching bronchial tubes of the lungs as a tree.

“What really spoke to me is that so many patients relate to and are inspired by it,” Anna said. “The artist came for the opening and met with the cystic fibrosis team and shared with these students how his experience has changed as the field of medicine has changed.”

Then there are the moments of pure, unexpected delight—a beaded sculpture made from found objects, ceramic dinosaurs that look like balloon animals, neon pieces glowing in a corridor.
“I love the fun responses I see when people don’t know I’m there and someone encounters an unexpected artwork,” Anna said. “It’s just as meaningful as the direct commentary from patients about how the art has provided respite.”

Away from work, Anna and her husband Nick—nurse supervisor for the Outpatient Neurology Clinic at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics—are raising daughter Charlotte, who turned four in February. Charlotte is, by her mother’s account, an observer, a library devotee, and an enthusiastic outdoor adventurer. The family’s Saturday tradition is the Iowa City Public Library, where Charlotte has recently discovered the CD collection.

On many Sundays, the Villarreals make a different kind of trip—45 minutes on I-80 to St. Paul, where Anna grew up, was baptized, and where she and Nick were married in 2015. They joined the congregation in 2023, after Charlotte was born, and haven’t looked back.

“We had great church options in Iowa City, but it was tough knowing the community St. Paul had created and not being part of that,” Anna said. “The mission-driven work was so hard to find when you’d experienced it most of your life.”

Her parents, Ron and Karin Mullen, are fixtures at St. Paul. Ron, recent president of the church council, sings in the choir and is reliably found around the building doing whatever needs doing, especially painting. Karin is a steady presence in the Book Corner and a regular communion assistant. For Anna, watching them give back in retirement is its own kind of grace.

“As an adult child, I have so much joy watching my parents do what they love in service of others. They find it so fulfilling. It’s why we struggled to find a church home before we came back to St. Paul,” she said. “Going to church wasn’t just that we were going through the motions. This is part of our identity as a family. This is how we serve. It is such a rooting experience, to have that guarantee of community coming together to make a difference.”