1983, New York: where the Living Museum comes from
Before opening in Saint-Blaise, the Living Museum has more than forty years of history. It begins in a New York psychiatric hospital.
In 1983, Janos Marton and Bolek Greczynski opened a studio at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in New York. The idea was simple and, at the time, unusual: to offer the people they welcomed not an occupational activity, but a genuine place of creation, where you come as an artist.
What that shift changes
In a Living Museum, no one is defined by a difficulty or a diagnosis. You are an artist, a participant, a maker. This is not a nuance of vocabulary: it is what makes it possible to create without having to justify yourself, and to take back control over what you show of yourself.
From a New York hospital to Switzerland
The first European Living Museum opened in Wil, German-speaking Switzerland, in 2002. The movement then organised itself around the Living Museum Society, placing this philosophy within an international network where art and creative expression support agency, personal transformation and mental health. The approach was presented at a World Health Organization conference in 2016.
The Living Museum Neuchâtel is the fiftieth Living Museum in the world, and the first in French-speaking Switzerland.
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Open days on 18 and 19 September
Two mornings to discover the place before it opens, meet the community and ask any question you like.
What is gathering dust in a studio can start again here
Paint, brushes, easels, stools: we are equipping the place largely with what others no longer use.