The Living Museum

Visits the oft-scrutinized intersection of art and madness and discovers not a snake-pit of anguished scrawlings but instead a prodigious creative milieu where fine art succeeds at a very high level. Yu and ace cinematographer Shana Hagan locate this world at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens - not a must-see on the art world circuit, but that may change after this film. Psychologist Dr. Janos Marton and the late artist/actor/activist Bolek Greczynski, once buddies at art school, have created out of a decrepit dining hall a creative refuge for the mentally disturbed whose works large and small are so imaginative and incisive they put many a formal art institution to shame. As the unsentimental Dr. Janos says, "You won't find one artist here who's pretentious, and you can't say that about the Whitney."