Posts Tagged ‘History’

Mason Jar History

Posted on May 3rd, 2012 • Filed under Look • No Comments

The New York Times Magazine took a look at the history of the Mason jar over the weekend. For canners and collectors alike, you’ll enjoy this read.

Image via Patrick Q

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Activating Stilled Lives: The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display; International Conference at the Department of History of Art, UCL

Posted on April 7th, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

This exciting conference–free and open to all!–just announced! Looks like a good one; so wish I could go!

Cultures of Preservation
Prepared specimens appear in many guises: as monstrous or typical organs preserved in formaldehyde and kept in glass jars not unlike pickled food, as stained and fixed tissue slices, or as skilfully arranged mounted animals. They may be found in cabinets of curiosities, in the laboratories of histologists, in anatomy theatres or in natural history collections, but nowadays equally in art galleries, the shop windows of fashionable boutiques, or horror films. This research network is concerned with such kinds of preserved natural objects, in particular with anatomical wet or dry preparations and taxidermy. It explorses the hybrid status of these objects between nature and representation, art and science and studies their fabrication, history and display.

The network is a collaboration between the UCL Department of History of Art, UCL collections, in particular the Grant Museum of Zoology, the Hunterian Museum, London and the Natural History Museum, London.

Activating Stilled Lives: The Aesthetics and Politics of Specimens on Display
International conference at the Department of History of Art, UCL
Thursday 17 May – Friday 18 May 2012

The past twenty years saw an explosion of exhibitions fathoming the relations between art and science as well as numerous refurbishments of natural history or former colonial museums. Many of these displays and gallery transformations mobilised specimens, be it taxidermied animals or preserved human body parts. Objects were put into new contexts opening up their meanings, others disappeared in storage or travelled back to the countries where they were once collected. The conference will address the challenges institutions face when dealing with formerly living entities and consider the aesthetics and politics of their display. The idea is to discuss the use of specimens in temporary exhibitions, museums or university collections and the role curators, art and artists have been playing in the transformation of these spaces. We also would like to consider how preserved specimens have changed through the altering contexts in which they have been displayed. One could name the initial transformation of organisms into objects, the more recent re-definition of pathological specimens as human remains, or the dramatic rearrangements that took place when natural history, anthropology or anatomy collections (many dating from the nineteenth century) were updated – coinciding with a shift in audiences, from specialists to a broader public. Often the historical displays were significantly altered, or even destroyed and replaced by „techy“ but at times also sentimentalised, „post-modern“ installations that still await a critical assessment.

Beyond that, the question of preservation shall be considered in a more expanded sense, as this subject area offers a unique opportunity to reflect more broadly on issues of conservation and their ethics and to raise a variety of questions such as: How and why do various cultures preserve elements of what is considered as nature? How does this relate to environmental notions of conservation and extinction? Should flawed specimens be disposed of? Can museums as a whole be considered cultural preserves? Should we preserve the preserves? And last but not least: Do we really need to embalm everything?

Confirmed speakers: Claude d’Anthenaise (Director, Musée de la chasse et de la nature, Paris), Steve Baker (Artist and Art Historian, Norfolk), Christine Borland (Artist, Glasgow), Mark Carnall (Curator, Grant Museum of Zoology, London), Nélia Dias (Anthropologist, Lisbon), Anke te Heesen (Museology / European Ethnology, Berlin), Petra Lange-Berndt (Art Historian, London), John MacKenzie (Professor Emeritus of Imperial History, Lancaster), Robert Marbury (Artist / Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermy, Baltimore), Angela Matyssek (Art Historian, Marburg / Maastricht), Lisa O’Sullivan (Curator, Science Museum/art-history/events/culture_of_preservation London), Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Historian of Science, Berlin), Rose Marie San Juan (Art Historian, London), Johannes Vogel (Director, Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)

Detailed programme: For further information please contact
Mechthild Fend m.fend(@)ucl.ac.uk or Petra Lange-Berndt p.lange-berndt(@)ucl.ac.uk

More information available here.

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The Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences Celebrates its Illustrious and Incredible Collection and History in Two New Exhibitions and a Book!

Posted on March 29th, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

In the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, when natural history was still called philosophy and most naturalists were amateurs, collectors would create what they called cabinets of curiosities — accumulations of animal, vegetable, mineral and anthropological specimens to amaze and amuse.

Often these collections grew large enough to occupy entire rooms, or even buildings. In some cases, they turned out to be precursors of modern museums.

In a way, that was the kind of project seven Philadelphia men embarked on in 1812, when they rented premises over a millinery shop, gathered a few preserved insects, some seashells and not much more, and created the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia…

–”Cupboards of Curiosities Spill Over,” Cornelia Dean, The New York Times

The Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences has a lot going for it. It is the oldest natural science research institution and natural history museum in the New World, with a history stretching back to 1812. It boasts the Titian R. Peale Butterfly and Moth Collection, a lot of nearly 100 glass boxes containing said insects arranged in pleasingly geometric patterns by Titian Peale, son of painter and first American museologist Charles Willson Peale (see 4th image down). It boasts fossils collected by American president and Declaration of Independence author Thomas Jefferson. It also houses an incredibly vast and utterly astounding collection of natural history artifacts, books, taxidermy, skeletons, wet specimens and more. More’s the pity, then, that you would never suspect the quality and breadth of this collection by its public face, which gives one the impression that The Academy is merely a bland, second-rate natural history museum aimed at easily distractable children.

I am very pleased to report, then, that the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences has used the pretext of its 200th birthday to right this wrong, and make visible its illustrious history and mind-bogglingly gorgeous collection through 2 new exhibitions–both now on view–and a new nearly 500-page luxurious book. One exhibition–”The Academy at 200: The Nature of Discovery”–displays rarely viewed specimens and artifacts from the museum stores. “Everything Under the Sun,” a second exhibition, features luminous photographs by the amazing Rosamond Purcell of a variety of the incredible artifacts and specimens hidden backstage. The associated book is entitled A Glorious Enterprise: The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and the Making of American Science and features Rosamond Purcell’s lavish color photographs.

Above is an excerpt from The New York Times’ review of the book and exhibitions; you can read the entire piece and see the photographic sideshow (from which the above images are drawn) by clicking here and here, respectively. You can find out more about the book “A Glorious Enterprise”–and purchase a copy of your very own–by clicking here. You can find out more about the exhibitions by clicking here and here.

Thanks so much to friend and Morbid Anatomy Art Academy Instructor Marie Dauhiemer for sending this along!

Images top to bottom: All by Rosamond Purcell drawn from the New York Times slide show, and presumably featured in the book and exhibition:

1. A spider crab (Libina canaliculata), collected by Joseph Leidy in Atlantic City.
2. Black-backed kingfishers (Ceyx erithancus), collected by the ornithologist Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee in Siam (now Thailand), 1937-38.
3. Cone shells collected for the museum from Tanzania, Dutch New Guinea and the Palau Islands by A.J. Ostheimer III during the 1950s.
4. A selection from the butterfly and moth collection of Titian R. Peale, a noted 19th century entomologist.
5. A Ruby-cheeked Sunbird from Borneo, given to the Academy by Thomas B. Wilson in 1846.

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Off to Italy in Search of the Material History of the Human Corpus with Evan Michelson

Posted on March 5th, 2012 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

I have some very exciting news to report! This evening, my very good friend–and Morbid Anatomy Scholar in residence/Oddities star–Evan Michelson and are absconding to Italy to collect images and data related to a long term project which has long obsessed us both. In Evan’s (very eloquent) words:

We will be exploring the social, spiritual, philosophical and material history of the human corpus from the Early Christian period, through the Enlightenment and into the Early Modern Era. This trip will take us to medical museums, ossuaries, cathedrals and burial grounds in several different cities, and it is the culmination of a lifelong obsession on both our parts.

Italy seems like the logical place to start: home of the Roman Catholic Church and the greatest of the early anatomical artists, it is also the home of the Renaissance – the historical pivot point that brought us from the Dark Ages into the Age of Science. Death in all its mystery has the most profound lessons to impart, and the religious attempt to transcend decay through myth transmuted the body into an object of sensual luxury and splendor. Science reclaimed the corpse, and in doing so gave rise to a different kind of purely mechanical beauty. That transitional moment is the object of our pilgrimage.

So please excuse some predicted silences, and look for reports and updates here! And please, feel free to send suggestions for sites to visit, things to eat, etc. to morbidanatomy[ag]gmail.com.

Ciao for now!

Image: Ercole Lelli’s anatomical waxworks, Bologna, Italy; photo by Joanna Ebenstein

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