"The Willard Asylum Suitcases" Exhibit Reception

Name: "The Willard Asylum Suitcases" Exhibit Reception
Start: 2025-01-24T17:00:00-08:00
End: 2025-01-24T19:00:00-08:00
Location: 1333 Butte House Rd, Yuba City, CA 95993-2301, United States

Schedule

Fri Jan 24 2025 at 05:00 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC-08:00

Location

1333 Butte House Rd, Yuba City, CA 95993-2301, United States | Yuba City, CA

Join us for a FREE reception to celebrate "The Willard Asylum Suitcases" exhibit at the Sutter County Museum. Light refreshments will be served, and exhibit photographer Jon Crispin is scheduled to be in attendance! This temporary exhibit will be on display from December 18th, 2024 through February 7th, 2025.
In 1869, New York State opened the Willard Asylum for those in need of long-term psychiatric hospitalization. The Willard Asylum in rural upstate New York grew to hold several thousand patients, evolving in the 20th century to a modern psychiatric hospital.
Willard distinguished itself by having a particularly close relationship with the nearby communities. When it closed in 1995, an employee discovered over four hundred suitcases belonging to previous patients that were filled with objects from before and during their stays at Willard. The collection of cases dates from 1910 into the 1970s. Photographer Jon Crispin has been photographing at Willard regularly since the 1980s. His photographs of the Willard Asylum suitcases are an extremely rare and important look into the institutional lives of patients with mental illness. This exhibit presents visitors with the opportunity to see into the lives of the Willard residents, to discuss how our society dealt with mental health issues historically, and to learn about current approaches today.
This exhibit was made possible by Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health. Sutter-Yuba Behavioral Health (SYBH) provides services to individuals and families who are experiencing serious or ongoing mental health and/or substance use disorders in Yuba and Sutter Counties.