Main activities
Selig Árpád as an assistant physician at the Mental and Neurolgical Clinic in Lipótmező started collecting the patients’ works of art during the 1920s. The Selig Museum was registered in the official list of museums in 1932. In the 1930s Zsakó István the physician director of Lipótmező took care of the collection. He enriched and made it more rewarding by collecting medical equipment, historical documents on the institution and the researches of the physicians concerning the relation between mental conditions and art making. The collection suffered a lot during the World War II. The permanent exhibition called Psychiatric Gallery Museum reopened in 1988. In 2007 Lipótmező (the Hungarian Psychiatric and Neurological Institution) was closed and its museum was saved by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. From 2007 on The Research Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences maintains the Psychiatric Art Collection. Two art historians – Judit Faludy and Monika Perenyei – curate the exhibitions and organize the programs.
It is a non-profit institute. The works of arts and documents are stored properly for researches and there is a small exhibition hall for temporary shows. We have rooms for workshops also. Our main activities are the organization of conferences on the issue of outsider art in art historical, psychiatric historical and cultural contexts and curating exhibitions retrospective and involving contemporary artists also.
European collaboration
We would like to expanse the scope of our conferences and make it more and more international by inviting researchers, curators, artists, art trainers and art therapeutists from abroad. We are planning to continue the publication of the texts of our conferences.
Future visions
The Psychiatric Art Collection basically is a research institute with a significant collection and the sole one in Hungary that is open to the public. That is why we believe that our mission is to cultivate and develop it to become a living and vivid archive being able to provide possibilities and infrastructure for researching, communicating and organizing on the complex topic of outsider art.
contact details
art historian, curator
PhD student, art historian, curator
In.: On the Map. Exploring European Outsider Art. A Notebook, Muesum Dr. Guislain, Ghent, Belgium 2012 ISBN 9789076745114 D/2012/7729/1 NUR 895 / 640
