Forensic photographer Nikki Johnson and curator Anna N. Dhody share their thoughts about morbid anatomy and abstraction in their latest exhibition at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.
Mütter Museum
Posted inBooks
A History of Motherhood Through Design
Designing Motherhood includes over 100 objects spanning medical devices to depictions of laboring women in films.
Posted inArt
The Race to Rescue the Remains of an 18th-Century Cemetery
When a forgotten graveyard was unearthed at a Philadelphia construction site, no city agency would step in. The Mütter Institute came to the rescue, but now it needs the public’s help.
Posted inArt
Responding to Human Remains with Crocheted Skeletons and Beaded Organs
Sabrina Small and Caitlin McCormack explore the life and decay of the human body in sculptural fiber art at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.
Posted inArt
Creating a Skeletal Symmetry from a 19th-Century Collection of Imperfect Skulls
Robbers, prostitutes, and fallen tightrope walkers: the craniums in the Hyrtl Skull Collection in the Mütter Museum at College of Physicians of Philadelphia are fractured remains of imperfect lives.
Posted inArt
The 18th-Century Anatomist Who Celebrated Life with Dioramas of Death
Like his anatomist peers, 18th-century Dutch scientist Frederik Ruysch preserved human and animal specimens for study, either dried or in jars.
Posted inArt
The Macabre Practice of Binding Books in Human Skin
Skin from the thigh of an unfortunate Philadelphia woman felled by a parasitic infection delicately lines the spines of three books in the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.
Posted inArt
Repatriation Through Portraiture: Giving Narrative to Disability
Many studies of anatomy and the beauty of the human body are all about symmetry and proportions, a sort of endless steamrolling of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” through art history. Yet that barely explores the incredible diversity of human forms. It’s the “variant body” that artist Riva Lehrer examines in teaching anatomy at the Art Institute of Chicago and in her series of portraits responding to her own disability, as well as to anyone who lives in a body that feels outside what’s perceived as “normal.”
Posted inArt
I’ve Been to Small Black Door
Sometimes art happens by accident, like teenage pregnancy. On occasion the mishap can be fortuitous.
