Événement

A Journey into the Curious World of the Medical Museum

Anatomical Venuses, The Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig: A Journey into the Curious World of the Medical Museum
An Illustrated Lecture by Joanna Ebenstein
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The Velaslavasay Panorama welcomes photographer and researcher Joanna Ebenstein, who has traveled the world seeking out the most fascinating, curious, and overlooked medical collections, backstage and front, private and public. In the process, she has amassed not only an astounding catalogue of images, but also familiarized herself the fascinating history behind these collections and the enigmatic and alluring artifacts they house.

Abounding with images and insight,Ms. Ebenstein's lecture will introduce you to the Medical Museum and its curious denizens, from the Anatomical Venus to the Slashed Beauty, the allegorical fetal skeleton tableau to the taxidermied bearded lady, the flayed horseman of the apocalypse to the three fetuses dancing a jig. Ebenstein will discuss the history of medical modeling, survey the great artists of the genre, and examine the other death-related arts and amusements which made up the cultural landscape at the time that these objects were originally created, collected, and exhibited.

Joanna Ebenstein is a New York based artist and independent researcher. She runs the popular Morbid Anatomy Blog and the related Morbid Anatomy Library, where her privately held cabinet of curiosities and research library are made available by appointment. Her work has been shown and published internationally, and she has lectured at museums and conferences around the world. Recent exhibitions include The Great Coney Island Spectacularium an immersive investigation into the often bizarre spectacles of turn of the 20th century Coney Island (through 2012); Anatomical Theatre, a photographic survey of artifacts of great medical museums of the Western World; and The Secret Museum, a photographic exhibition exploring the poetics of collections private and public, front stage and back. She is the founding member of Observatory--a gallery and lecture space in Brooklyn, New York--and annual co-curator of The Congress for Curious Peoples, a 10-day series of lectures and performances investigating curiosity and curiosities, broadly considered.