In the early 1900s most patients at the Netherne asylum in Surrey, England, had no teeth. Although patient care featured plenty of fresh country air, treatment followed macabre trends of the day, such as the removal of nonessential body parts like tonsils, spleen, and teeth, which was believed to mitigate the symptoms of mental illness. But in 1946, an artist named Edward Adamson arrived with a radical new treatment called “art therapy.” Over time, his patients made more than 100,000 works of art, which were respectfully cataloged and preserved until the hospital closed in 1993, and most were lost. When key pieces of Adamson’s collection were rediscovered, it created a new appreciation for the Netherne patients as outsider artists with a complex understanding of the world. Using a mix of archival film and audio recordings, Abandoned Goods tells the poignant story of the patients’ collective work and its journey from diagnostic to artistic intention.  RYS