Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals

Massive state-funded mental hospitals, many of them among the largest and most elaborate structures ever erected in America, were a prominent feature of the American landscape for more than a century. Once sources of civic pride before becoming human warehouses, the asylums were emptied towards the end of last century, and now sit crumbling, keeping their secrets. Many of them are already gone.

This exhibit is a photographic journey through a lost American world. From 2002 to 2008, Christopher Payne visited seventy institutions in thirty states, photographing palatial exteriors and crumbling interiors that looked as if the occupants had just left. Payne's elegiac, haunting photographs of abandoned wards and peeling walls are a final, official record of a grand experiment gone awry.

Curators and museum professionals click HERE for a complete PDF exhibition proposal.

Contents: 25 to 30 framed color and black and white photographs.

Availability: Spring 2011

Booking Period: 4 or 8 weeks.

Size: 100 to 200 linear feet.

Insurance and Fees: Inquire