Anna Schuleit: MacArthur Genius Grant Recipient

Anna Schuleit is an artist who has specialized in public installations. She was recently one of 25 people awarded $500,000 unrestricted fellowships by the MacArthur Foundation.

One of her installations that was singled out was called "Bloom," an attempt to pay tribute to the people and the place of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, a long abandoned psychiatric hospital. The premise was simple: Multiply the number of patients by the number of days the building was open by the average number of flowers a patient might receive while ill -- unless they are a long-term psychiatric patient, where flowers are seldom given.

Each area was filled with a different kind of flower, and the installation remained in place for four days. All the flowers were then donated to local hospitals and state institutions.

Here is some of her statement:

THE CONCEPT OF BLOOM

In response to seeing, exploring, and photographing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, I developed Bloom as a site-specific installation to commemorate the life and history of the building and its people, as well as to mark the transition of MMHC into a new place and architecture. Bloom is an idea for creating a tribute to the historic building of Mass Mental -- that is, an entity of a creative work, guided by the fact that Mass Mental itself is a whole with connected limbs, busy centers, quiet ends, wings, nooks and crannies, and nonetheless a living, moving whole.

In November of 2003, all spaces at the Mass Mental Health Center will be raised out of the uniform fabric of the building into individual fields of color: thousands of flowers will be placed in the old hallways, rooms, and staircases to mark the many memories connected to this site. Each hallway will have a different type of flower. Each will be a different stretch of color. The axes of the building, its layout and scope, will be recognized individually.

All of the flowers will be in bloom at the same time, creating a continuous, unbroken composition of color and scent throughout the building.

Here are some pictures:






I am a huge fan of good public art, or of unique visions and locations for art, and this one felt exactly right to me. I found it strangely moving. She is certainly deserving of the Genius grant.

Tags: Anna Schuleit, MacArthur Genius Grant, Bloom, public art, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, flowers