Table 2.

Themes and Representative Quotes Regarding Medical Students’ Views of Institutional Portraiture

Institutional values	“I think if you are going to put someone’s portrait up you are kind of saying ‘this is someone we aspire to be.’” “It was 100 years since the first women graduated from here or went here. It’s been 100 years and all the pictures on the wall are still men, and it’s like, what in the world?” “I think ultimately the only relic of a person that we see in the institution like this is a picture or a named lectureship or named professorship or something. So, it’s a direct representation of the institutional values, or at least the staying power of the institutional values.”
Resignation and coping	“For me, I think I block it out.” “I’d probably say that the majority, if not all, of my interactions about the portraits have been with other students who I think either really are critical to the content of the portraits or, they just make a joke about it that’s kind of like: ‘Oh look, there’s another one,’ or ‘When do you think they are going to put up someone who’s not bald and white and you know?’”
Contemporary consequences	“I think if these portraits could speak, they would not be so excited about me, I feel they would totally not be so excited about me being a student here, they might spit at me.” “I think it’s just like this is the space that clearly is not for me, it’s a space that I’m just passing through.” “I think for other students of color, it’s frustrating to always see people that do not look like you held in esteem, to be bombarded with this imagery of these white—of elitism and power. I think it sends the message, that that is what we should make synonymous with those words I described. That white men equals success, power, elitism, money, whatever.” “And we are absorbing a lot of what the artwork reflects, whether we realize it or not. I think the artwork can affect people’s moods, it could affect people’s self-esteem. I think it’s art as a really important aspect of our daily interactions with the school in terms of the physical environment and how we feel about ourselves and our institution.” “I think some students could not care less, and those students are probably white men.”
The erasure of history	“As we already know, some of these portraits that are hanging on these walls are portraits of slave owners or people who invested in slavery and Yale’s money is deeply tied to slavery and we should not stand for that. And they should be taken down from the walls; that is not acceptable. I do not care what else they did, that’s irrelevant.” “It’s not like I think that we should not honor these people, I just think that honor should not come with erasure of—if they did other things, other parts of their past. And also, honor other people too.”