AFTER 91 YEARS...

of continuous operation the original buildings of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center (MMHC) - formerly the Boston Psychopathic Hospital - are scheduled to close in November of 2003. The staff and services will be moved to the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain, MA, and a new facility will replace the old building of MMHC, to which the staff and services are to return within a few years.

When a building is closed after nine decades of continuous use, its long history moves from a physical setting to an abstract place in our memory. In the course of closing the Massachusetts Mental Health Center, the people who worked and stayed in this building for years, whose lives were affected - often unconsciously - by its dimensions, directions, and traffic ways, are moved to a new environment. In the end, it is their memories that remain connected with the site and keep it alive.

To mark the transition of the original building of the Massachusetts Mental Health Center from the physical shape it has been, to the remembered, the following project is proposed:

• to create a community remembrance in honor of the former life of this building, its generations of clients, employees, researchers, and trainees
• to raise awareness of its long history and tradition of care and treatment
• to offer a humble dedication of time, energy, and hope from those who become involved in this effort, to those in whose memory it is created
• to give something that has not been given to this place before: palettes of color, texture, and scent

An installation project will be created within the building that invites former patients and employees, staff, students, and the general public, to re-visit the building once more before its closing. There will be a symposium (at a nearby venue), and an open forum on the front steps of the MMHC. All of the events will take place with our patients, employees, researchers, students, and the general public.

The events will be free and open to all.