Current Exhibitions
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Francesc Tosquelles: Avant-Garde Psychiatry and the Birth of Art Brut
through August 18, 2024
This exhibition—situated at the intersection of art and psychiatry—explores for the first time in the United States the legacy of Catalan psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles (Reus, Spain, 1912–Granges-sur-Lot, France, 1994).
After fleeing the Nationalist government of Franco amidst the Spanish Civil War, Tosquelles arrived in 1940 at the Saint-Alban psychiatric hospital in Southern France, where he devised a series of revolutionary psychiatric practices that came to be called “institutional psychotherapy,” predicated on non-hierarchical relations between patients, doctors, manual laborers on site, neighboring communities, and outsiders.
During the German occupation of France, this “asylum-village” also became a refuge for political dissidents and intellectuals associated with the artistic avant-garde, whom were exposed to the prodigious artistic output of its patients—among them Auguste Forestier, Marguerite Sirvins, and Aimable Jayet. These very artworks prompted French artist Jean Dubuffet to expand upon the notion of “art brut” in 1945 and contribute to the development of his collection.
The exhibition and accompanying book (which will be available in the summer of 2024) will include artworks by European artists associated with Tosquelles and Dubuffet’s concurrent aspirations to “cure” mental health and art institutions alike, as well as films and archival documents excavating Saint-Alban’s outsized but subterranean influence on French intellectual life in the 20th century, featuring Antonin Artaud, Paul Éluard, Frantz Fanon, and Jean Oury.
Somewhere to Roost
through May 25, 2025
Featuring over 60 works including paintings, textiles, photographs, and sculptures, Somewhere to Roost will explore the ways that artists evoke and construct ideas of “home.”
The exhibition’s title is drawn from an artwork by Thornton Dial, Sr. (1928–2016), “Birds Got to Have Somewhere to Roost,” which will be among the works on view. Reflecting on this statement, the exhibition will explore the importance of rest, comfort, and safety, while considering the poetic and unspecified nature of the word “somewhere.” Taken both literally and metaphorically, Somewhere to Roost represents spaces where artists live and work, as well as places remembered, imagined, or dreamed. The exhibition will highlight experiences of immigration, incarceration, and housing insecurity, as well as visions of home that are playful, inventive, and unexpected.