Copyright Michael Ramseur, 2003. Published by ARTSHIPpublishing Feb., 2005.

LCCN # 20005922312. ISBN # 0-9765975-0-0 .

This book, many years in the making, contains over 260 pages of startling medical, psychiatric, and historical facts, family memoirs, heartbreaking stories, poetry, fiction, nostalgic images and memoirs, and over 100 images of dramatic , original art. You are about to enter the portals of one of the nation's most beautiful and tragic repositories of human history from a dark chapter of our collective past.

This book is now available on Cd-Rom, Download, and IN PRINT .

the CD-Rom is $ 54.50; Download, $ 44.50; Printed Book $ 79.50 and $ 125.00.

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About Michael Ramseur: artist, writer, and social worker

Ramseur has been working in the field of human services for eighteen years, with most of that time spent on acute psychiatric units. Hewas until recently Director of Social Services at Baldpate Hospital in Georgetown, MA. He attended Trinity College in Hartford, CT. (1970), the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for several years during the mid-1970's, and the Simmons College School of Social Work in 1991.

A pastel artist for 27 years, Ramseur has focused on a range of subjects, including riders on the MBTA subway system in Boston, the Million Dollar Bridge in Portland, ME (now defunct), the textile mills in the Merrimack Valley (particularly Lawrence, MA.), and Danvers State Hospital. Ramseur has been drawing and writing about Danvers since 1986. He has been in numerous group and one-man art shows in Boston and the surrounding region. He has appeared on NECN in the context of USA film production, "Session 9", in which he was interviewed, with photographer Jeremy Barnard and sculptor Andrew Chulyk, in the DVD featurette "The Haunted Palace". Ramseur had a commissioned drawing on the St. Elizabeth Hospital published in the April, 1999 issue of THE NEW YORKER magazine in connection with an article on John Hinckley, Jr. by Elsa Walsh titled "Strange Love".

He has devoted a major part of his adult life to observing and recording the history, evoltion, moods, and destiny of the Mental Asylum at Danvers. He is an artist, a mental health care professional, and an historian. With this book he delivers a deeply-researched and comprehensive portrait of the asylum that has housed, inspired, cured, terrified and brutalized us for over 200 years, and which-- in spite of its stately beauty and its position on the National Historic Register-- is now scheduled for demolition by the State of Massachusetts.

Included in this book are the passions, memories, reflections, visions, and fantasies of scores of those who have explored this institution, who worked and cared for its patients, whose friends and relatives were imprisoned there, who made films and art there, whose families were raised there, and who care deeply about its fate.

Ramseur, who resides on the northern coast of Massachusetts, is the proud father of a daughter, Georgia Bennett-Ramseur, who is studying music and the performing arts.

other books by this author:
ASYLUM ON THE HILL
THE EYE OF DANVERS

this author's video collaborations:
VORTEX with Charles I. Durgin and Trina Regan
PALACE OF SHADOWS with Richard Gavin
GHOST OF THE WITCH JUDGE with Justin Lassen and Trina Ragan

for this author's VIDEOS and DANVERS web site: click on image below

A broad selection of Ramseur's pastel representations of the Danvers Asylum can be seen on the 9 pages of ARTSHIP site Danvers art exhibits from 2002 through 2007. Go to the main menu for these exhibits by clicking on the image below

AVAILABLE NOW: another book by Michael Ramseur....

THE EYE OF DANVERS

Recently released in print by Author House, this 88-page history -- the original, earlier version of the giant HAUNTED PALACE-- -is illustrated with over 50 of Ramseur's pastels and contains rich historical detail. CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO ORDER

EXHIBITS and SIGNINGS: please watch this space

The EYE OF DANVERS

a personal exploration of Danvers State Hospital

by Michael Ramseur

with original art by the author

This version contains 53 images of original Ramseur pastels-- and will SOON BE AVAILABLE IN PRINT. Please EMAIL US to be notified