Wellcome Collection,London
This jumbled exhibition tracking changing attitudes to mental illness could absorb been a powerful study of Bedlam and psychiatry. Instead it fails to make sense of the genuine place and the myth Sir Alexander Morison stands tall and sombre with his top hat in his left hand and a white handkerchief in his right. His eyes are grey and slightly sunken, his lips thin, and his face long and gaunt. He seems marked by the sadness of his profession. For Morison was an “alienist”,a 19th-century doctor of mental illness, at London’s notorious asylum Bethlem Hospital, or popularly known as Bedlam,whose history and cultural significance are explored by the Wellcome Collection’s fresh exhibition Bedlam: The Asylum and Beyond. Related: Taking over the asylum: art made at Bedlam and beyond – in pictures Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com