- Museum of Anatomical Waxes “Luigi Cattezneo” (Museo Delle Cere Anatomiche “Luigi Cattaneo”): Bologna, Italy Wax model of the eye apparatus and related structures; Clemente Susini, late 18th or early 19th Century. Image reproduced with permission of the photographer, Joanna Ebenstein, Anatomical Theatre.
presentation and summary by Alison Reiko Loader
Our class began with a journey into a realm of medical models, human specimens and hybrid cadavers. Having read about German anatomist/inventor/artist/showman Gunther Von Hagens’ touring Body Worlds exhibitions and the ethical and legal complexities of tissue rights, our first school week of 2010 culminated in a visit to Bodies…The Exhibition at the Eaton Centre downtown. With Von Hagen having exhibited in 2007, this competing show by Premier Exhibitions marks the second time “real human bodies” preserved through plastination have displayed in Montreal. That these shows have been tremendously popular here and all over the world is remarkable. Afterall, who would think that millions of people and their children would want to walk among dozens of cadavers flayed and frolicking?
José Van Dijck contends that the “appeal” and “controversy” over Body Worlds can be “properly understood only if we approach the phenomenon from a historical perspective.” Body Worlds and its imitators recall anatomical spectacles dating back to the Renaissance, among them public dissections and the “artful display of body parts” in medical museums showcasing both preserved specimens and anatomical models. (Bodyworlds: The Art of Plastinated Cadavers, p.102)
Continue reading ‘Is Seeing Knowing? The Using and Losing of Histories Among Anatomical Bodies’
