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While still an assistant physician, Árpád Selig began to collect artwork by patients at the Lipótmező Mental Hospital in the 1910s, and, with this pioneering initiative in Hungary, he laid the foundations of a distinguished collection. He sought to follow the example of Hans Prinzhorn's Heidelberg Museum, but had not the time to complete a similar scholarly treatment and arrangement of his collection due to his deteriorating state of health. After his premature death, the psychiatrist István Zsakó continued the work the founder had begun. In 1930, the Society of Hungarian Psychiatrists conferred the name Selig Museum on the collection, which was opened to the public at its temporary home in the Angyalföld district of Budapest in May 1931. Later the collection was returned to the Lipótmező institution, but, due to the military evacuation of the hospital during the war, it was moved to the Tata mansion of the Esterházys, then to the Grand Hotel on Svábhegy in Budapest. Due to the war-time vicissitudes, the collection diminished, a good number of significant works were lost without trace, and it was only in 1952 that fragments of the Selig Museum: damaged pictures heaped upon each other were found in a loft staircase of the institution. In the December of 1988, on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the foundation of the "Lipót" bedlam, the permanent exhibition of the museum was opened to the public, and the scholarly treatment of the collection was begun. From this time on, the collection became one of the destinations of those interested in the border regions of art, a treasure trove for students of visual expression and forgotten oeuvres, as well as a group therapy venue for patients in the hospital. The cultural historical significance of the collection was confirmed by its declaration as protected by law in 1990 and by its official classification as a museological collection in 2002.

The majority of the works in the collection were produced by untrained artists. Before today's treatments shortening patients' hospitalization periods, the mental diseases of patients deteriorated, their disease-processes were prolonged. Often, patients were condemned to several decades of or even life-long confinement. Frequently, this coercion was what triggered their acts of creativity, but time and again it was the disease itself that made them subdue their inhibitions and led them to self-expression. The museum held works by significant, professional artists, too. József Nemes Lampérth, who originally had three drawings in ink in the collection, needed hospital treatment in 1922. Lajos Gulácsy spent the last nine years of his life, the period between 1924 and 1933, in the hospital, but work by professional artists was also represented in the collection by the plein-air compositions of Géza Zórád, the visionary watercolours of Gábor Áronson and István Pál's paintings of hospital themes. In connection to each artwork, the collection, having a scholarly character, preserved the relevant case histories. Thus the case sheets of Borbála Madách, Erzsébet Vörösmarty, József Nemes Lampérth, Lajos Gulácsy, and Vaslav Nijinsky, as well as various other documents of medical history invest the collection with unique cultural historical value. The almost century-old collection has been regarded not so much as an Art Brut museum, but as a medical "diagnostic collection". In the course of its existence, it was maintained in connection to the mental hospital, and supported therapy with its historical and examination material. The times before the Second World War are documented by drawings and paintings patients spontaneously made; from the 1960s, however, the support of visual self-expression and the pictorial revelation of hidden psychological content received greater emphasis, and so the material of the collection began to include works made in the framework of creative therapy. For two decades, its pictures have been on display and received as representing aesthetic value in themselves. Focusing on Art Brut artists, our current selection includes 50 works from the material of the Museum of Psychiatry. From the 1920s to our day, nine creators are brought into limelight, who were prompted by the experiences of seclusion and confinement to shape both enchanting and bizarre pictures suggestive of deep suffering. These micro groups of artwork are authenticated by experiences often unreal and the pain of hopeless situations.

Next to the Museum of Psychiatry built primarily on historical material, the first Hungarian Art Brut exhibition room, the Tárt Kapu Galéria (Open Gate Gallery), was opened in 2004 to exhibit and sell art-therapy works. As the last exhibition of the forum terminated due to the closing down of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, was the one-man show of a young man whose graphics weltering in colour and hue end the material of this exhibition.

Edit Plesznivy art historian