Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson (Wolfe Video)
Jane Anderson, an out lesbian, is enjoying the life and career her Great Aunt Edith should have had. Anderson is a film director and screenwriter. Her credits include penning the screenplay for the HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014), for which she won an Emmy Award. Aunt Edith wasn't so fortunate.
Edith Lake Wilkinson (1868-1957) was an artist who lived in New York City with her partner Fannie. The daughter of a wealthy family, Edith was committed to a mental hospital in 1924, where she spent the rest of her life. Was Edith mentally ill, or was she falsely committed by a shyster attorney who was stealing her money and who used her lesbianism as an excuse to have her declared insane?
Decades after Edith's death, Anderson and her wife try to unravel the mystery. As Michelle Boyaner's documentary Packed in a Trunk: The Lost Art of Edith Lake Wilkinson begins, Anderson is examining Aunt Edith's paintings, which sat unseen in the attic of a relative's home for more than half-a-century. Wilkinson's work is bright, joyous, and exquisite. Her last paintings, produced six months before she was committed, do not appear to be the work of a woman who was suffering from mental illness.
Anderson decides to find out what really happened, and to bring Wilkinson's work into the public eye. She arranges for a gallery exhibition in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a historic resort town that has long been an LGBT mecca. Both Anderson and the gallery owner are astonished and delighted to discover that Wilkinson had painted a picture of the building that now houses that same gallery.
Anderson talks to family members, including a cousin who knew Aunt Edith. She visits the hospital where Edith lived. In addition to hospital records, she uncovers a letter sent to Wilkinson by her attorney shortly before he had her committed. In that chilling note, the attorney suggests that Wilkinson live apart from her "friend" Fannie, who was actually Wilkinson's spouse.
It was a different world during the 1920s. Not only did the two women have no legal protections, they were considered "sick" in the eyes of the law and by society. The result was the grave injustice that forced Wilkinson to live the last 30 years of her life in lonely misery, her artwork packed away and forgotten.
Packed in a Trunk is at once profoundly sad and joyously uplifting. It's infuriating to relive the horrific injustice that Wilkinson endured because she dared to be who she was at a time when "ladies" were expected to "know their place." Yet the film is also a delightful treasure chest: viewers will share Anderson's pleasure as she exposes her aunt's art to the light of day and gives Wilkinson the acclaim she deserves. The film underscores the importance of remembering those who came before us. It reminds us that we must be ever-vigilant in the fight for acceptance and equality.
Jane Anderson has launched a website which offers further information about the film and about Wilkinson's life: packedinatrunk.com.