How Montefiore Emotionally Marked a Year Since Its First Covid Patient

Alto's poignant tribute to healthcare heroes

Throughout the coronavirus crisis, healthcare workers stood tall, facing down impossible odds to save countless lives.

On March 12, marking the one-year anniversary of its first Covid-19 patient, New York's Montefiore-Einstein hospital system thanked its hero doctors and nurses for their self-less commitment with a dazzling tribute in art and light rising several stories into the sky.

Agency Alto and technology studio VTproDesign projected designs from artist Tristan Eaton across the facade of Montefiore's main 30-by-270-foot complex in the Bronx.

"This installation was created for the Montefiore community and its 50,000 employees and their families and friends as a way to attempt to start the healing process," Alto founder and creative chief Hannes Ciatti tells Muse. "We saw the most potential of achieving that through an in-person event that was live-casted, because it gave the healthcare workers a way to come together during a powerful moment. It was intimate, Covid-safe, and the streaming element allowed those who couldn't attend to feel the warmth of their community."

During the event, Ciatti observed "an entire range of emotion on display. Lots of tears and singing, from everyone, ourselves included. And as tragic as the situation in the Bronx, and everywhere, has been [with NYC having been a pandemic epicenter early on], it was rewarding to be able to use our skills to bring a modicum of peace and hope and as we stand up together as New Yorkers."

Eaton's work has graced large canvases before as part of Alto and Montefiore's "Canyon of Heroes" initiative. Most notably, his towering mural at 34th Street and 8th Avenue honored nurses for their service, proclaiming the city's resolve to overcome Covid, even as the virus left its famed thoroughfares, for the most part, silent and empty.

This video chronicles the overarching campaign:

And this week, the team launched fresh work on the streets of NYC and in The New York Times, with Eaton's clasped-hands motif heralding resiliency and healing: