Thursday, November 15, 2007

Museum Dr. Guislain, Ghent, Belgium







When in Belgium a few weeks ago, I visited a really wonderful museum called The Museum Dr. Guislain. The museum is housed in a 19th Century pschiatric hospital and feels like an Edward Gorey drawing come to life. It is an amazing musuem, containing a few different collections: The first is outsider art, the second is an ongoing inquiry into how photography reveals attitudes about madness past and present, and the third is a history of the hospital and Dr. Guislain and, thus, the cultural history of madness.

In addition to being a really cool museum with ingeniously placed artworks in an atomospere of real 19th madhouse menace--you can almost hear footsteps ringing in the abandoned corridors--they have a wonderful museum shop featuring titles from past exhibitions, many with English translations.

More images here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I wish the Gimcrack Hospital was as pretty as that