Wassenaar designs installation at Becker Medical Library
2026-06-05 • Sam Fox School
Photo: Richard Sprengler
Now installed at WashU’s Becker Medical Library is a vinyl text installation designed by Associate Professor Cheryl Wassenaar in collaboration with library staff. The installation on the WashU Medical Campus, which features selections taken from the Hippocratic Oath, wraps around the glass walls of the central staircase. She installed it over several days with support from Christopher Woodward, a candidate in the MFA in Visual Art program.
Wassenaar was inspired to create the installation after learning that each class of WashU Medicine students writes a class oath inspired by the profession’s Hippocratic Oath that identifies the students’ collective values and goals as they start their professional training.
Associate Professor
“I thought about the impact that might make, seeing portions of that oath reflected back to them in the medical school library where they work to earn their degree,” said Wassenaar. “I had done text-based installations with writers in various public and creative spaces, but I’d recently begun collaborating with local libraries.”
Wassenaar worked with staff at WashU’s Becker Medical Library on a design that would acknowledge the history of the oath through a value gradation of colors associated with the medical field.
“Each value level represents a section of the oath, portions of the pledges made by the graduating student to their patients, to their professions, to society, and to themselves,” explained Wassenaar.
Established in 1911, Bernard Becker Medical Library is one of the oldest and most comprehensive medical libraries west of the Mississippi. It serves as an information resource and services hub for the Washington University Medical Center and the global health sciences community.
For more about the Becker Medical Library, visit becker.washu.edu.
