Our Lucky Hours (12A*)

The asylum was radically re-thought, with doctors, patients and nurses working together to run the facility, with the support of the local community. Patients were respected, integrated and individually supported. They took up roles in the hospital kitchen and local farms, they published a newspaper, and many pursued flourishing visual art practices.

During the Second World War, the asylum sheltered refugees and Resistance fighters, among them many figures from the Parisian avant-garde. At the end of the war Jean Dubuffet visited, whose discovery of the sculptures by patient and artist Auguste Forestier supported his elaboration of the notion of ‘Art Brut’.

Join us at 7pm on Thu 11 Mar for an online Q&A with Sarah Lombardi, director of the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne and author and arts facilitator, Ben Platts-Mills.