Exhibiting Madness in Museums

Remembering Psychiatry Through Collection and Display

Catharine Coleborne, Dolly MacKinnon, Catharine Coleborne, Dolly MacKinnon

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136660092
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

While much has been written on the history of psychiatry, remarkably little has been written about psychiatric collections or curating. Exhibiting Madness in Museums offers a comparative history of independent and institutional collections of psychiatric objects in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. Leading scholars in the field investigate collectors, collections, their display, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity. Linked to the study of medical museums this work broadens the study of the history of psychiatry by investigating the significance and importance of the role of twentieth-century psychiatric communities in the preservation, interpretation and representation of the history of mental health through the practice of collecting. In remembering the asylum and its different communities in the twentieth century, individuals who lived and worked inside an institution have struggled to preserve the physical character of their world. This collection of essays considers the way that collections of objects from the former psychiatric institution have played a role in constructions of its history. It historicises the very act of collecting, and also examines ethical problems and practices which arise from these activities for curators and exhibitions.

Part I

Ways of Seeing and Remembering Psychiatry in the Museum

1	Seeing and Not Seeing Psychiatry Dolly MacKinnon and Catharine Coleborne

How is past psychiatry both seen and obscured? In this volume, we contend that psychiatric practices, as well as those who have been made subject to its regimes, become more visible when we consider both the material and visual cultures produced through and by psychiatric institutions, and also the later representations of these as they are embodied in museums, collections and displays. The more elusive fragments from the world of mental health constitute the basis of this series of individual investigations into past psychiatry. We argue here that the themes of material culture, museums and public display intersect with the dominant scholarship in current histories of psychiatry in new and productive ways. Histories of psychiatry have, broadly speaking, drawn heavily upon textual materials such as the extensive archival remains of institutional medical cultures of the nineteenth century in the form of patient clinical case notes. This collection departs from that tradition and instead takes objects as its central focus. In this way, our collective endeavour is to make visible and audible different views of past psychiatry.

While much has been written on the history of psychiatry, remarkably little has been written about psychiatric collections and their display. The existing literature has either catalogued relevant medical collections, or tended to concentrate on the relatively small number of individual psychiatric art collections worldwide. No study has examined the far more numerous and extensive practices of psychiatric collections, or the material histories of the many individuals, both patients and staff, who lived and worked in these institutions, were incarcerated in them, and whose bodies were made subject to the medical objects that survive in psychiatric collections.

Furthermore, the rise in family history and genealogy research, evidenced by the popularity of television programs such as the Australian, American and British versions of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, has meant that many families have discovered for the first time the institutionalised experiences of family members about whom they previously knew very little. Such individuals have often been left out of the family narrative because only sketchy details are known about their experience, and because mental illness has been stigmatised over time. Hidden from public and private view, these individuals nevertheless lived inside institutions and touched the solid worlds of institutional spaces and material objects.

This collection offers a comparative history of independent and official institutional collections of psychiatric objects in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. The leading scholars in this volume investigate the histories of collectors, collections, their display and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity. Linked to the study of medical museums, this work for the first time broadens the study of the history of psychiatry by assessing the significance and importance of the role of twentieth-century psychiatric communities in the preservation, interpretation and representation of the history of mental health through the practices of collecting. Interpreting the purpose and meanings of the psychiatric collection and its display involves engaging with a range of concepts and practices including memory, collections and exhibiting.

Therefore this project draws upon several different explanatory frameworks. In separate essays, authors investigate theories about collecting and collectors; medical museums and psychiatric collections; visual cultures of insanity; photography and institutions; the ethics of exhibiting psychiatric materials; material culture through institutional clothing; the soundscapes of recreation and forms of technology; and through exhibitions of psychiatric institutions, heritage and memories; as well as the collection and exhibition of bodies and body parts on display.

Psychiatric collections play a significant role in histories of twentieth-century psychiatry. These link us to ways of remembering and memorialising psychiatry and experiences of mental illness. Echoing the words of Paul Antze and Michael Lambek, museum scholar Susan M. Pearce writes that ‘[c]ollections are essentially a narrative of experience’.¹ In these psychiatric collections and their display, we can detect the many possible narratives of the psychiatric experience, and show how these constitute new representations of psychiatric history. Yet some narratives are necessarily more strident than others in these representations. Collecting psychiatry has largely been a private practice conducted within the confines of the institution, and away from the public gaze. Some collections are housed in former psychiatric hospitals, and some are now available online; for instance, the Lost Cases, Recovered Lives exhibition, about found suitcases of psychiatric patients at Willard Hospital for the Insane in New York.²

In the second half of the twentieth century, the widespread closures of psychiatric institutions brought specific challenges for psychiatric communities and also broke down the clear distinctions between notions of ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ institutional communities.³ Memories of asylums as concrete places are now all around us. They are especially evident in the recent history-making around psychiatry by former institutional communities. As Antze and Lambek assert, memories ‘are never simply records of the past, but are interpretative reconstructions that bear the imprint of local narrative conventions, cultural assumptions . . . and practices.’⁴

Writing about the twentieth-century history of Severalls Hospital in Essex (UK), Diana Gittins notes that to ‘try and account for the history of the hospital . . . demands consideration of both space and time, and the interstices and intersections between them.’⁵ Cultural and historical geographers have been attuned to these ideas about space and material worlds, and have written about ‘post-asylum geographies’ in the context of writing about health and place.⁶ For example, Alun Joseph, Robin Kearns and Graham Moon argue for ‘an expansion of the cultural-geographic interest in the place of memory in the built environment to include abandoned sites of psychiatric treatment’.⁷ This scholarship is important for historians of material culture and collecting to consider. Yet although these scholars have demonstrated interest in the spaces of the institution, as well as in mapping the social spaces constructed through psychiatric illness, with some exceptions they have yet to turn their attention to the relationship between psychiatric space, objects and memory or memorialisation.⁸

This particular relationship is at the heart of our discussion about remembering the past of psychiatry, its spaces and their meanings, through its material culture, both visual and auditory. The space of the psychiatric hospital was organised around gendered power relationships. Identities for staff and patients formed within institutional spaces were also constructed through power relations. Objects formed part of this institutional dynamic. Some objects and material culture were handled exclusively by staff. Other objects were reserved for the use of patients: men as well as women, adults and children. Some items were used to treat and/or discipline patients, while others were made by patients and/or staff for either individual or collective use within the asylum. Asylums and later mental hospitals also branded institutional goods to promote the authority of the medical institution and to prevent thefts and pilfering by staff and opportunists.

In writing about the history of collections of psychiatry it is important to recognise that there are two violently opposed schools of thought: those that wish to preserve a form of history, and those who would be happy to see no trace left of the former psychiatric regimes, the buildings and landscape that housed them, as well as any artefacts that relate to these practices. As Peter Beresford observes for Britain ‘[f]or some survivors, the idea of retaining the bricks and mortar of even one psychiatric hospital may be too painful and they [survivors] want them all razed to the ground.’⁹ Thus those that actively collect items for psychiatric collections are consciously choosing to remember and preserve part of their past for posterity. Psychiatric collections, while they comprise evidence of past practices, are really therefore as much about constructing the present and the future of psychiatry. They represent some past actors, but through processes of selection, omission, and oversight, they also obfuscate and obliterate the voices of the majority.

In remembering the asylum and its different communities in the twentieth century, individuals who lived and worked inside an institution have struggled to preserve the physical character of their world. The essays included here consider the way that collections of objects from former psychiatric institutions can play different roles in the construction of psychiatry’s histories. They further historicise the very act of collecting and interrogate its meanings across both time and space, with individual chapter contributors from several countries.

Yet, as Nurin Veis suggests in her chapter, the ethical display of psychiatric objects is fraught, as many of the custodians of these collections are all too aware. While many items in these collections are of a medical therapeutic nature, there are also items from everyday life, and in some instances, even personal effects from former patients. Personal property in particular presents the problem of how informed consent for display can be obtained when the patient is either dead or unidentified. These issues, as well as the ongoing housing and maintenance of these objects, continue to plague curators in charge of these significant historic collections. Accessible only by appointment, most of these psychiatric collections are not open to the public, which begs the question, who is the intended audience for these collections? Equally problematic are the reasons that these collections were created and kept. Most recently, mental health users/survivors have questioned the appropriation of their past by the medical and state bodies, as well as individuals, in the creation, collection and constructions of psychiatric history. For many mental health users/survivors the only alternative is to construct, as Beresford advocates, ‘a survivor-controlled museum of madness and the psychiatric system.’¹⁰

Particularly in the twentieth century, as deinstitutionalisation saw the demise of large psychiatric services in favour of community care options and acute hospital ward services, the many diverse and often obsolete records and material culture objects of this trade were kept from the public gaze. Whatever the rationale for the creation of each collection—whether curious and ad hoc remnants retained in a store room, active accumulation tracing therapeutic practices over time by staff, or desperate last minute collections of items abandoned in buildings scheduled for demolition—these collections remain controversial. The unifying quality of these collections has been their use in writing the evolutionary history of psychiatry, where the past represents a ‘horror’ that contrasts with the more enlightened practices of the present. For these reasons, this volume offers the fields of museum studies and the cultural history of mental health a much needed critical study of the many forms and functions of collecting psychiatry, and the place of memory and museums in the constructions of complex histories about psychiatry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This collection also fills a significant gap and offers a timely analysis of the literature about the history of museums and psychiatric collections, at a time when an increasing number of these psychiatric collections are being made available to the general viewing public for the first time, either in museum exhibitions or via online interpretations. The contributions offered within the covers of this volume aim to provide a contextual account for professionals—including museum curators, historians of psychiatry, medicine and cultural history—as well as the general public, about the ethical responsibilities and benefits of displaying patients’ experiences and psychiatry’s history in an informed and inclusive way. This timely volume opens a series of debates, which, through the various trajectories discussed within its contents, are intended to guide and inspire those involved in this rapidly growing research field towards innovative new directions in the display of psychiatric collections in the twenty-first century.

Ethical collecting and display are now fundamental considerations of museum acquisition and exhibitions, although this has not always the case. Recent significant global media coverage has been given to the contentious issue of indigenous bodies as subjects of display, along with the presence of cultural artefacts in public and university muse...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Part I: Ways of Seeing and Remembering Psychiatry in the Museum
• Part II: Material Culture and Memories of Madness
• Part III: Bodies and Fragments
• List of Contributors
• Bibliography
• Index