Museum Lust

Wall of Fishes, Vanderbilt Museum from Curious Expeditions Nothing symbolizes the amateur naturalist's aesthetic as well as a wall of preserved specimens in glass jars, like the jewellike Wall of Fishes in the Vanderbilt Museum (captured here by the wonderful Curious Expeditions, in a fascinating slideshow treasure gallery of the Vanderbilt). A similar glistening room of glass is found in my revious post about London's Hunterian Museum. The problem with historical specimen collections like these is that slowly but surely, they're falling apart. Storing biological tissue in alcohol or…
This article originally appeared on the old bioephemera September 9, 2007. Syphilitic skull with three trephine holes and osteomyelitic lesions Hunterian museum One of my favorite London experiences was my visit to the Hunterian museum. If only I had more time there! I liked it so much, I returned on my last day, procrastinating my departure for Heathrow as long as possible. The Hunterian is tucked away inside the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on Lincoln's Inn Fields. In its Victorian incarnation, it was a wonderful multi-tiered gallery with railings, balconies, and suspended…
De prospectiva pingendi, Book 3, figure lxivPiero della Francesca (c 1412-92) This month's Lancet has an interesting article by G.D. Schott, linking Piero della Francesca's pioneering orthographic projections to technologies like fMRI: In the neurosciences today, images of the brain and its constituent structures are typically presented in the triadic orthogonal format, comprising coronal, sagittal, and axial projections. Less commonly, rotated or tilted projections are used. But our forebears are easily forgotten, and here I suggest that the contemporary way in which brain images are…
The National Library of Medicine just opened a new exhibition, "Harry Potter's World: Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine." "Harry Potter's World" explores the plants, animals, and magic featured in the Harry Potter book series and their roots in Renaissance traditions that played an important role in the development of Western science. The exhibition incorporates the works of several 15- and 16th-century thinkers mentioned in Harry Potter and looks at topics such as alchemy, astrology, and natural philosophy, as well as the ethical issues faced by both the fictitious characters from…
Fixed (fawn)Lisa Black Lisa Black's hybrid clockwork animals are heartbreaking - especially the fawn and duckling. The title of her series, "Fixed," strikes just the right note of ambiguity. Is the fawn's state a travesty, or better than the alternative? Who did the fixing, and why? Via Brass Goggles PS - speaking of Goggles, have you seen Google's new Mail Goggles? It's an add-on for Gmail which is supposed to prevent you from sending drunk email messages late at night, by requiring you to do math before allowing you to send. The only problem is, the math looks too easy - I'm terrible at…
Before heading to the Apple Store SoHo for our blogging panel last Wednesday, I dropped by evolution ("science and art in SoHo"), a store recommended by Pam of Phantasmaphile. Evolution is clearly NYC's prime destination for the amateur natural historian, an east coast cousin of Berkeley's Bone Room. They offer skulls (real and replica), butterflies and beetles in cases, minerals, shells, memento mori carvings, skins, ammonites, coprolites, meteorites, tusks, teeth, arrowheads, and other things one never dreamed one needed. A sphere of elemental copper? Natural hematite magnets? A wallet…
The Way Things Go Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987 Hirshhorn Museum I went by the Hirshhorn a few weeks ago, and this was my favorite piece: a film depicting a slow-moving, low-budget Rube Goldberg apparatus built by artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss out of tires, candles, fuses, ramps, ladders, and random objects. I mean, what's not to like about a flaming tetherball? The purpose of the apparatus? Nothing, really, except to spin itself out. It's pointlessly meditative. And I liked that - you could start watching the film at any point and stop at any point, as if you were watching…
Vernon Grant, 1944 If you enjoyed the vintage public health posters I wrote about a while ago, you might want to stop in and see the National Academies' new exhibition, "An Iconography of Contagion." (Such a great title!) Over twenty public health posters from 1920-1990 will be on display until December 19. Michael Sappol of the National Library of Medicine (and curator of Dream Anatomy) will give a free gallery talk tonight at 6pm.
Madonna and HorseflyJohn Brophy, 2008 Pam over at Phantasmaphile never fails to discover wonderful, quirky new art. Her latest find: John Brophy. His "Madonna and Horsefly" kind of freaks me out, not in a bad way, but because I've been planning some paintings along this exact theme! But Brophy's are better than mine would have been, so it's just as well. (But darn it all anyway! This is why I need to paint ideas, and not just sit on them indefinitely.) Princess Minky MomoJohn Brophy, 2007 Like Madeline von Foerster and Cristina Vergano, Brophy is clearly influenced by the old Dutch masters…
light table with brain specimen slices National Museum of Health and MedicineNeuroanatomical collection A few months ago I took a tour of the National Museum of Health and Medicine's neuroanatomical research collection. It's a remarkable hoard of preserved and sectioned human brains, most sandwiched between plates of glass. Some of the specimens are quite old (the NMHM has specimens dating back to the Civil War). I took a few photos to show you what the facility is like. storage cabinets for NMHM's neuroanatomical collection The cabinets above house trays of glass slides containing serial…
Surgical suture sampler, circa 18th cen. Zurich Medical History Museum Photo from Ickybitty's photostream . . . unless your grandma was a trauma surgeon. This antique sampler from the Medical History Museum in Zurich represents a variety of stitch techniques appropriate for different anatomical regions and types of injury. Both the embroidery and the illustrated backing are rendered in remarkable detail:
The Cure of Folly (The Extraction of the Stone of Madness) oil on board attributed to Hieronymous Bosch*, c. 1475-1490 Museo del Prado, Madrid At one point or another, Hieronymous Bosch must have turned his paintbrush to every bizarre practice known to the fifteenth century Dutch mind, and this early piece is no exception. The composition is relatively simple: a surgeon is performing trepanation (craniotomy) on a restrained subject, while two onlookers watch. But looking closely, one can see that all is not right in Bosch's peculiar countryside: the surgeon is wearing a funnel as a hat, and…
Bibliodyssey just published an outstanding collection of illustrations depicting the development of the microscope. I recently saw these antique microscopes at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, and I enjoyed trying to match my photos with the engravings. This ornately decorated microscope was made by Christopher Cock (~1665), designed by Hooke and used by him in preparing Micrographia. (NMHM, "The Billings Microscope Collection," 1974) Note the similarity to the microscope in this plate from Hooke's seminal book Micrographia (via Bibliodyssey): I love the NMHM's period display…
Very Slow, Very TiredMachine-Animals Nicholas Lampert, 2006 I promised last week to review the MoMA exhibition "Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities." Since making that promise, I've heard from several more friends that they've been to see it - so perhaps this review is preaching to the choir! I was extremely impressed with the breadth and curation of this show, and would go again, if I were in NYC. Wunderkammern, or cabinets of curiosities, arose in mid-sixteenth-century Europe as repositories for all manner of wondrous and exotic objects. In essence these collections--combining specimens…
Le Corbeau Volant, 1875 Edouard Manet While in NYC last weekend, I squeezed in an hour at the MoMA to see their exhibition Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities (July 30-Nov 10, 2008). It's really phenomenal. The main criticism I heard as I wandered the gallery was that the collection was perhaps a bit incoherent and scattered, and that may be true, but order barely imposed on a chaotic diversity of specimens is the essence of a wonder cabinet - isn't it? This was one of the specimens that caught my eye: a simple, fluid lithograph of a flying raven by Edouard Manet. It's from the…
Hans Baldung Grien, Death and the Maiden, 1518-20 Via Morbid Anatomy, I discovered that artist Saul Chernock has written an interesting mini-essay on historical portrayals of "the Undead, images of beings that hover between the realms of life and death." Daniel Hopfer, Death and the Devil Surprising Two Women, circa 1500-10 Many of the woodcuts, engravings, and paintings he collected for this post juxtapose death and sex in ways that, according to Chernock, "provide an interesting counterpoint to the contemporary Zombie whose appetites have essentially been neutered. I suppose we should…
Vintage public health posters like this one are remarkable not only for their skilled design, but also for the varied ways they remain remarkably timely or seem bizarrely dated. For example, compare the playful-yet-kinda-creepy "keep your teeth clean" poster above, as opposed to the very different meaning of "clean" in the anti-VD poster below. I think alarmist STD posters like this one and its contemporaries would have some difficulty getting approved today. The National Library of Medicine has many more vintage posters here - or visit this Newsweek gallery for a quick tour.
If you think that one inanimate shark is as good as another, your understanding of the art market is, as they say, dead in the water. Mr. Saunders's piece just didn't have the same quality or cache. (Although Mr. Saunders did claim his shark was more handsome.) Most important, it's not just about the work of art; rather, the value placed on a particular work derives from how it feels to own that art. Most art dealers know that art buying is all about what tier of buyers you aspire to join. From The New York Sun's amusing review of Don Thompson's upcoming book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark:…
The brand-new Device Gallery is hosting a group show called "Fantastic Contraption" featuring artists like H.R. Giger and Christopher Conte. The show opens this Saturday, July 19, from 6-9 pm - check it out if you're in La Jolla! Steam Insect Christopher Conte Via dark roasted blend.
Michael Dax Iavocone Another opportunity for DC-area readers: Michael Dax Iavocone's new show opens at flashpoint gallery tomorrow (Saturday), July 12, 6-8pm. From the gallery press release (pdf): Artist Michael Dax Iacovone investigates and chronicles his familiar DC environs using mathematical algorithms to govern the way in which he experiences space. Using these formulas, Iacovone creates a blueprint to follow, film and photograph the DC area. Iacovone's solo exhibition at the Gallery at Flashpoint, The Numbers Behind, explores spaces and image-making in a new and mechanical way and is on…