Bloom.

After being open for 91 years, the Massachusetts Mental Health Center closed its doors for the final time.  Once the staff had relocated to another hospital and the plans for a new building were set, the building was destroyed.

But for four days before the doors closed, the center was a wonderland.

Artist Anna Schuleit was commissioned to create an installation in the barren building to memorialize it,  its staff, those who spent time there, and also to acknowledge the absence of flowers in psychiatric hospitals.

 BLOOM is an installation that contained 28,000 potted, blooming flowers of carefully chosen colors that were placed strategically throughout the four floors of the hospital. The pool was filled with African Violets, the basement floors were covered with live sod, and wildflowers appeared to be springing up out of of the linoleum, fourth floor hallways. During these days, the hospital's public announcement system played recorded sounds of the hospital's final, working days. 

For 91 years, the hospital had orders to remain bleak and washed out. But for these four days, the silent walls that are filled with stories of horror and of miraculous mental recoveries were slathered with a new palette that they had never seen before, and I'm sure they were very grateful.

The installation was free and open to the public. Viewers could walk through the hospital and meander along the trails of prospering flowers. Viewers could look into rooms and find a couch with the cushions still in tact,  flooded in a sea of Strep Throat. With the smell of earth in the air, the sound of slamming doors, patient voices, and echoing footsteps played in the ears of all who visited.