THE CUNNINGHAM DAX COLLECTION (CDC)
The CDC is named after its founder,
Dr Eric Cunningham Dax AO
(1908 – 2008).
ABOUT DR DAX
Dr. Dax was an English psychiatrist who moved to Melbourne, Australia when he was appointed as the Chairman of the Mental Hygiene Authority in 1952. As superintendent of the Netherne Hospital, Surrey, he had employed a resident artist, Edward Adamson, to conduct an art program for the residents. The resultant works became part of creator’s medical record. In the new Australian role, Dr. Dax made many positive changes to Victoria’s mental health services. One such change was to introduce art programs into Victorian psychiatric hospitals.
ABOUT THE CUNNINGHAM DAX COLLECTION
The Cunningham Dax Collection now consists of more than 16,000 artworks created by people who have experienced mental ill health or psychological trauma. The Collection includes works on paper, canvases, 200 poems, photographs, textiles, sculptures, installations, artists’ books and diaries, digital media and films as well as Dr Dax’s files, letters and writings.
The origin of the Collection was in Netherne but the Victorian collection is the kernel. Victoria’s psychiatric hospitals began to be closed down in the 1980s and the thousands of artworks that had been created in the art programs may have been destroyed. However, Dr. Dax believed that these were very valuable as educative tools. So he salvaged around 8000 of these works, the major portion the works in the Collection.. His interest in the use of art in psychiatry had begun in the late 1940s when he hired an artist (Edward Adamson, http://www.adamsoncollectiontrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2-2011.-DOF-Raw-Vision-for-EAF.pdf ) to work in the Netherne Hospital, Surrey England. A few works created there were brought to Australia and are the earliest works in the Collection.
Two distinct eras are represented in the Cunningham Dax Collection; artworks produced within psychiatric hospitals from 1940s into 1970s and artworks donated to the Collection by artists and community groups from 1980s until the present. Those created in the hospitals offer unique perspective on mental ill health because they are often the representations of the creator’s vision without psychotropic drugs in play. Some illustrate the environment for mentally ill people at the time of their confinement. Other works were submitted subsequently for inclusion in the Collection by artists themselves.
The Collection also includes a number of sub-collections. These were incorporated into the Collection from the early 2000s after the Collection’s remit expanded to include artworks made by people who had experienced psychological trauma as well as mental ill health. This expansion led to a number of group donations, including the Childhood Abuse Collection, the Holocaust Collection, the Tsunami Collection, the Safe Havens Asylum Seekers Collection as well as a Bushfire Collection.
The Cunningham Dax Collection is the only one of its type and size in Australia and only one of three or four such collections in the world. It is heritage-listed in Victoria.
Before 2018, the Dax Centre was the custodian of the Collection. In 2018 there was a merger of the Dax Centre Ltd with SANE Australia. The Collection was placed into trust by the then board of the Dax Centre, before the merger. There is a licence agreement between the The Cunningham Dax Collection Trust and The Dax Centre to assure that the works are used for educative and display purposes.
The aim of the Trust is to assure that the Collection remains as a whole, intact and is used.
The aim of the licence is to assure the appropriate use of the works and their maintenance to museum standards.
The Cunningham Dax Collection 