France, Sept. 27 -- The exhibition at Sainte-Anne brings together 145 drawings and paintings dating from 1858 to 2020, offering a window onto more than a century of changing attitudes towards art and mental illness.

For much of that history, works by psychiatric patients were viewed through the lens of their illness. In 1900, London's Bethlem Royal Hospital - the institution whose name gave rise to the word "bedlam" - held the first major international exhibition bringing together such works.

Its 600 pieces were treated mainly as medical records rather than art. When their artistic qualities later attracted attention, they were sometimes attributed to a supposed lack of inhibition among patients.

Sainte-Anne's collection tells a differ...