Glore Psychiatric Museum, St. Joseph, Missouri

The Glore Psychiatric Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri is an unsettling, but extraordinary environmental experience: from the patient-made wicker furniture at the entrance, through displays of centuries of treatments of the mentally ill, to the specifics of this institution--the medical wards, Occupational Therapy

projects, old farming equipment (the asylum was self-sufficient for many years, needing to purchase only sugar and salt from the outside environment), cooking facilities, historic photos, car-customization youth project, documentation and architectural artifacts.
Highly recommended.

museum building
 broken pieces of the razed asylum's facadeover 500 objects swallowed by one patientembroidary therapy done in OT class
Above: pieces of sculpture originally part of the front facade of the old asylum and examples of one patient's compulsion to swallow inorganic objects (he died during surgery to remove over 500 of these objects--what if they'd left him alone??) and another's self-expression in Occupational Therapy class.

straightjacket restraintbio-feedbackwicker furniture made by patients

At first I took photos of the many fascinating artifacts, but there were too many of them, and they were too unsettling. I chose not to continue.
See this museum for yourself!

MORE:
Glore Museum
Other Glore web pages: 1, 2
Eyewitness comments, 1965 tour of Glore Psychiatric Hospital
Comments from family member of a mental patient


1. Rivertown
2. Fading
3. 40th Parallel
4. St. Joseph, MO
5. Glore Psych Museum
6. Troy, KS
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