Thomas Söderqvist 
“While much has been written on the history of psychiatry, remarkably little has been written about psychiatric collections or curating”, says the back-cover of Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry Through Collection and Display, edited by Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon.
A first sketch to a comparative history of collections of psychiatric objects, the volume, which will be published by Routledge in August, investigates collectors, collections, displays, and the reactions to exhibitions of the history of insanity.
Unfortunately, it’s limited to museums in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK, but that’s a good start — we’re eagerly waiting for a sequel treating the many rich psychiatric museum collections in continental Europe.
Madness and museums — collecting and exhibiting the history of psychiatry
“While much has been written on the history of psychiatry, remarkably little has been written about psychiatric collections or curating”, says the back-cover of Exhibiting Madness in Museums: Remembering Psychiatry Through Collection and Display, edited by Catharine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon. A first sketch to a comparative history of collections of psychiatric objects, the volume, which will be published […]
