February 2025

Recreating Public Art at Oregon State Hospital
By Mike Patton, former OSH Recreation Therapist, current Native Services Provider and Museum Board Member

We walked up the hill following a gravel path that encircled a storage warehouse on the south end of the Oregon State Hospital campus. Our small group of four patients and two staff are part of a therapy group that meets weekly. Usually, we go into the local community with the purpose of connecting with nature, ourselves and others. On this day in the summer of 2020, due to the new COVID pandemic and resulting restrictions, we are limited to staying on the State Hospital campus. Our small meandering group passed by sizable piles of landscape debris, discarded outdoor furniture and worn building materials maybe leftover from the major hospital reconstruction here that was completed in 2013. We came upon the massive, towering rock that is recognized by several in our group as the centerpiece of the Eola Hall visitor center. As we looked closer, other art sculptures emerged under the diffused cover of tall grasses and blackberry vines; etched granite rocks, small bronze figures including the fish fountain and huge basalt boulders. One of the group members recalls; “I remember these rocks, those little figures and there was a pond too! My family with my dog used to come visit with me at the Eola Hall visitor center. It was a great space where I could feel like I was in a normal place for a while. This art needs to be out where people can see and appreciate!”. We all agreed.

In May of 1992 the “Garden Environment” project was completed in a small interior courtyard in Eola Hall.

This project was awarded to local artists Frank Boyden (rock and bronze sculptures) and Mike Riley (landscape architect). It was funded through Oregon’s Art in Public Places program (1% for Art in Public Buildings). The Garden Environment was used as a visiting area for patients and their families. It was also often open in the daytime for patients to relax in a peaceful space. 

Frank Boyden is a well-known Oregon artist who founded the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in 1970. His work is found in numerous public and private collections. When Boyden first saw the 70 x 30-foot courtyard he was to work with he described it as, “The most awful thing I’ve ever seen”. Up to that point, the space was a designated smoking area for the near 460 patients living in the building. It was littered with cigarette butts, worn bare ground, flattened grass and dandelion. Building walls on two sides with chain link fencing topped with razor wire on the remaining sides.

Boyden said about the finished Garden Environment; “In making this space we wanted to create an environment which peacefully gave permission to those who used it to examine their senses in ways not possible in the hospital atmosphere.  We purposely made a set of different spaces and micro-environments in which people could more or less isolate themselves. We tried to make all the materials challenging and demanding to the senses.”

As part of the Oregon State Hospital replacement project many older buildings on the campus were demolished. This included Eola Hall in 2016. Fortunately, most of the art elements from the Garden Environment visitor area were saved though largely forgotten, until now.

In 2020 efforts were started to seek the re-installment of the rock and bronze pieces to a more public area on the Salem campus. With the wave of pandemic concerns the project was stalled, but now in coordination with OSH Facilities staff, the OSH Museum of Mental Health, the Arts Commission and interested community members we are pursuing placement of the art to a more appropriate location on campus. It is the hope that the art elements will be installed with input from the artist Frank Boyden in a location near the Oregon State Hospital Museum-Cremains Memorial-Reception Main Entry. It is also a hope that you and many others will get to see and experience the Garden Environment in person!

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January 2025

The Prefrontal Lobotomy in Oregon
by Dr. Howard Baumann, Board Member

This article was originally published in ChartsNotes, a publication of the Marion-Polk Medical Society, June 2014.

The most famous prefrontal lobotomy that ever occurred, occurred in Oregon, but never really occurred.  This particular lobotomy, of course, was the fictional lobotomy created by Oregon author Ken Kesey in his classic novel: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. You will recall that the story ends with Randle McMurphy finally losing his power struggle with Nurse Ratched, and landing up as a lobotomized zombie.  It should be noted that the most popular display at the recently opened Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health involves the memorabilia and prop artifacts from this movie. 

In actuality the first Oregon State Hospital patient to receive a lobotomy was Francis Kochan. In 1947, she was transferred from the Eastern State Hospital to the Oregon State Hospital, where she was paroled to her father so he could take her to Portland, where Dr. John Raaf performed the surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital. She had been described as combative, unpredictably assaultive, and had failed all the current therapies, including ECT.  Three months later she was described by a social worker as being much more docile, and now able be managed at home by her family. 

Oregon’s most notorious patient to be lobotomized was Roy DeAutremont, one of three brothers involved in the Great Oregon Train Robbery of 1923.  This botched holdup resulted in four people dead, a highly publicized manhunt, and eventually life sentences for all three fugitives.  Roy’s lobotomy was performed in 1949 due to worsening schizophrenia.  He reportedly became easier to manage, and would die in 1983 at age 83 at the State Hospital. 

Between 1947 and 1954 there were approximately 130 lobotomies done on Oregon State Hospital patients.  Surgeons in Portland did the earlier operations, but later all were done at the State Hospital on the second floor, east wing of the Dome Building.  The surgical suite is still there, now filled with partitioned office cubicles, but the beautiful marble-lined walls can still be seen.

In 1949, Portuguese surgeon Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for his 1930’s work in developing this operation.  Dr. Walter Freeman later led the charge in the United States and perfected the “trans-orbital” modification of the operation. An estimated 18,000 operations were done in the United States by 1951, and as many as 40-50,000 cases by 1956.  This so called “operation of last resort” remained somewhat questionable from the very start, and still remains controversial.  The controversy stems mostly from the research methodology that left many wondering about its true effectiveness.  Mercifully, with the discovery of effective antipsychotic medications in the 1950s, lobotomies were pretty much put out of business.  The Oregon Psychosurgery Review Board was created in 1973 to approve or decline lobotomies.  Between 1973 and 1981, only six operations were requested, with only one being approved, and that one proved to be a failure.  In 1981 the Oregon State Legislature banned lobotomies as a form of psychiatric therapy. 

Although no longer a therapeutic option, our fascination with the prefrontal lobotomy continues.  For instance, with the recent 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, along with all the usual conspiracy theories, the press somehow decided to recount the failed lobotomy done on the President’s sister Rosemary Kennedy back in 1941.  In addition, the Veterans Administration has recently been commanded by Congress to report to them the outcomes of the nearly 2,000 Veterans who had lobotomies done at VA Hospitals at the end of WWII for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (then called “battle-fatigue”) and other mental disorders.  All of this attention to lobotomies, much like the mental images we retain from the events of Ken Kesey’s masterpiece, helps give us insight into the past difficulties of our therapies.  Hopefully this will help us in making the critical decisions our country now faces in the management of the mental health.

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[1] The Oregon State Hospital Museum of Mental Health opened its doors on October 6, 2012.  Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Nurse Ratched, was present for the opening ceremonies of the Museum.

[2] Oregonian, 10 July 1947.

[3] Diane Goeres-Gardner, Inside Oregon State Hospital: A History of Tragedy and Triumph (Charleston, S.C.: The History Press, 2013), 200.

[4] Goeres-Gardner, 201-202.

[5] Jack El-Hai, The Lobotomist (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, 2005), 199.

[6] Statesman-Journal, 3 March 1981.

[7] El-Hai, 173-174.  An excellent review of this particular episode.

[8] The Wall Street Journal, 12-14 December 2013.