Access and Sensitivity Decision Making

This section discusses the considerations and decisions made on outstanding access and sensitivity questions raised prior to recataloguing.

Should the creators be named?

Parts of the collection have been publicly displayed and published from the late 1940s to the present. During initial discussions with Wellcome Collection in 2010, it is communicated that if the collection is acquired the patient’s names would be used internally only apart from a few select cases, and copyright would be managed as a ‘controlled risk'. Until 2012, creators were either anonymised or credited under a pseudonym, or disclosed solely to a professional audience. After this point, the Adamson Collection Trust decided to name the creators to redress the stripping of identity administered by medical institutions, and to allow creators and their families to claim ownership of works if they desired.

On the reverse of the majority of the works, and occasionally on the front, the creators first name and surname has been inscribed. Additional details including the date they created the work and the ward in which they resided have also been inscribed in some cases. They were also arranged by creator when acquired by Wellcome Collection.

At point of acquistion and later cataloguing, Wellcome Collection followed the recent change in the approach of the Adamson Collection Trust and decided to name the artists in the catalogue.

Subsequently the collection has been well used, photographed, exhibited and referenced, with the identities of named creators also being a subject of active research.

However, only four creators were known to ever consent to the publication or display of their works, with three choosing not to be named at that time. The context of creation, and the content in parts, explicitly connects the named individuals to residence within a clinical setting specifically related to their mental health. We should be mindful of the distress to a living creator or their families that may be caused to be publicly associated with the hospital and interpretations and discussions of their creative output.

Decision

The majority of creators had already been named in the catalogue for 10 years by time of review so removal from existing records would be largely ineffectual in reducing any potential harm to individuals or relatives. Removal would also contradict other policies around retaining previous titles as points of transparency and access.

Additional information from release of 1939 register and contextual clues mean risk is low of the majority of creators still being alive.

However, for any artists that were not previously named, they are initialised in the catalogue to reduce risk until known to be deceased or 84 years has passed.

Youngest possible age or known death of creator is recorded in the series level 'sensitivity description' field to make any changes easier to implement without full review.

Where material is digitised and made available online, it would remain subject to Wellcome Collection's copyright and takedown policy if requested by the creator or creator’s family.

Should the works be displayed or otherwise made available without creator consent?

The works were created in a clinical setting, but are not considered clinical records.

The majority of the content of the works can be considered to reflect the thoughts and feelings of the creators but they do not disclose specific information relating to their medical history, diagnosis or clinical treatment.

The works have a long history of display and exhibition and have strong value in reflecting aspects of the lived experience of mental ill-health in the mid-late 20th century UK care system through artistic abstraction. As mentioned previously, there is no evidence that the majority of creators explicitly consented to the display or ownership of the works by Adamson.

Decision

Where any explicit disclosure of medical history, diagnosis or clinical treatment does occur in the works or can be linked to the creator through supporting documentation, restriction of the record should be considered, unless the individual is known to be deceased, or the information has already been made public through previous cataloguing or publication by Wellcome Collection.

The overall risk to cause damage or distress to creators, and/or their families, is deemed lower due to the average age of the works and the paucity of personal information connected to each creator. No patient records or other information such as date or place of birth, age etc. are known to exist within our collections, and general notes about the patients and identifiable photographs created by Adamson are restricted. Patient records held outside Wellcome by Surrey History Centre are closed for 100 years.

We will continue to provide open access to the material but have added context to the records, in structure and description, to make clear, where known, when and where they were created and the provenance history up until this point.