This history of the Cunningham Dax Collection is a provocative story of how discarded artworks created by people experiencing mental illness became the basis of a world-renowned art collection. Psychiatrist Eric Cunningham Dax acquired thousands of creative works, many derived from patients in psychiatric hospitals in Victoria, during the 1950s and 1960s. These formed the kernal of the current collection of 12,000 works now housed in Parkville, Melbourne.