Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission: A Domestic Beginning

Reception: Friday, May 15, 2026, 5–7 PM 
Gallery Hours:  Friday & Saturday 11 – 4 pm (May 16 – September 5 only)

Eighty-Six Reasons for Asylum Admission: A Domestic Beginning, an exhibit by Ohio porcelain artist Kimberly Chapman, explores why women were institutionalized in asylums from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1970s. The exhibit confronts the gendered and unequal treatment of these spaces. Constructed in 1825—just decades before the rise of organized feminism—the Baldwin Buss Merino House stands at the threshold of a period when women’s autonomy was tightly controlled, conditions that could later justify institutionalization.

Kimberly Chapman is a sculptor based in Cleveland, Ohio. Her porcelain-based practice focuses on themes of female endurance and institutional violence, frequently drawing from historical research to examine systems that have silenced and subjugated women. She received her BFA in Ceramics from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2017, following a career in corporate and collegiate marketing. She also holds a MA and BA in Communication from Cleveland State University. Since graduating, Chapman has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions across the US, including: the National Museum of Psychology, Akron, OH; Erie Museum of Art, Erie, PA; the Baber Room Gallery, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI; and the Anderson Gallery, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY. She is a trustee at the Ohio Arts Group, an affiliate of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.