“I keep watch over collapsed beauties.”
The exhibition brings to life the history of Hungarian psychiatric art collections, presenting works by patients treated at the mental asylum, art brut works created outside the institution, written and visual documents, and a sound art work of “multitonal rhythms” inspired by psychiatrist István Hollós’s book (My Farewell to the Yellow House, 1927) and designed by Matthew Faulkner, as a FREEPSY collaborator (UK). The exhibition sheds light on the vulnerability of those living with psychiatric illness, the fate of works created within institutional settings, and the progressive museum initiatives of the interwar period.
Opening date: Friday 18 September 2026, 5.00 pm
Venue: MNMKK Semmelweis Museum of the History of Medicine
Address: 1013 Budapest, Apród utca 1–3.
Welcome address:
Zsolt Sári, State Secretary for Public Collections and Heritage Protection
Opening speech:
Csaba Pléh, psychologist and linguist, member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and the Academia Europaea
The exhibition will be open to the public from 18 September 2026 to 27 June 2027.
The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Institute of Art History at the ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, the Psychiatric Art Collection of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the Semmelweis Museum of the History of Medicine, part of the Hungarian National Museum’s Public Collections Centre.
Special thanks to the Archives of the Ferenczi Sándor Association, and FREEPSY (Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for our Times, University of Essex, UK)
Supported by NKA.
