Library Exhibit

I learned that the Tompkins County Library is featuring the exhibit "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic".  

 It was reading about that exhibit that sparked an idea for a novel, which of course, I wrote and published this year.
 An exhibit by the same name was on display at the Everson Museum in Syracuse in 2007;  thus a lengthy newspaper article in the Syracuse Post Standard, which I read.   At that time, however, I did not actually see the exhibit.  I also read the book by those who had been involved in putting the exhibit together.   So, today I was excited to have the opportunity to see it up close and personal.  Many of the things I read on the panels, I had already read in the book entitled The Lives They Left Behind.

This is one of those cases when the imagination trumps the reality.  What I had imagined in my head about the exhibit, upon which I had based many details in my story, was quite different from the reality.  Specifically,  what I saw in my mind's eye was three dimensional,  as if the suitcases were actually there on display.  But all I saw today were flat panels.  It somehow lacked the "largeness of life" that I had expected.
I don't know that I would say that I was disappointed in the exhibit, but I was certainly surprised that it did not match the vision I had of it.

The patients from Willard Psychiatric Hospital are identified only by first name and a number.   The one to the left is Mrs. Ethyl.  She was a minister's daughter from Ithaca, who ended up in an abusive marriage.  She had two babies, both of whom died.

It's not hard to imagine that she was overcome with grief and trauma.

The panel to the right is about a man named Dmytre from Austria who immigrated to America with his wife.  After his wife died, his world fell apart, and he ended up at Willard.  The title on the panel is "A Painting A Day".   Apparently, he painted every day, chronicling his life story in folk art.

One of the characters in my novel, In Its Time, was an artist and also painted.  Clearly, the idea for that character came from the book by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, and the real life Dmytre.

I cannot help but wonder if I had seen the actual exhibit before I wrote my book if it would have been any different.