Dilettanti Society in The Morbid Anatomy Library with Special Guest Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities! Decoding the Visual Language of Alchemy! Arcane Media! Upcoming Morbid Anatomy Events

We have many wonderful events coming up at Morbid Anatomy! 

First up, we have A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part 1, On the Language and Image or How to Read an Alchemical Text with alchemist Brian Cotnoir (Wednesday, June 3rd; tickets and more here). The next evening we'll be hosting the first iteration of the Dilettanti Society Happy Hour Cocktails and Show and Tell in the Morbid Anatomy Library presented by Art in the Age. This week's guest will be Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities, who will be presenting his collection of ancient and modern penises (Thursday, June 4th at 6:30 PM; tickets and more here). Later that evening will be a presentation of Arcane Media in the form of glass slides, magic lantern projections, and antique technologies (Thursday, June 4th at 8:00 PM; tickets and more here) followed the next night by Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal (Friday, June 5th; more info here).

We are also delighted to announce one new event: My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor and Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and The Radio Illustrated Lecture with Chiara Ambrosio, London Based Filmmaker; this will take place on Monday, June 22nd at 8pm; Tickets and more info here.  

Following is a list of all upcoming events; we highly recommend purchasing tickets in advance! You can also become a member and be alerted about events before they are announced to the general public by clicking here.  

The Morbid Anatomy Museum is a non-profit, and depends on donations and memberships to survive. If you appreciate what we do, please consider becoming a member or making a fully tax deductible donation today. Donations can be made here, and you can become a member--with assorted perks such as discounted admissions and free museum entry by clicking here.

IMMEDIATELY UPCOMING EVENTS

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part I - Alchemy it's Language and Image or How to Read an Alchemical Text. An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. 
  Wednesday, June 3rd, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here.

• Morbid Anatomy and Art in the Age Present: The Dilettanti Society Happy Hour - Cocktails and Show and Tell in the Morbid Anatomy Library featuring Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities, who will be presenting his collection of ancient and modern penises
  Thursday June 4th, 6:30pm - 8pm, $20 ($12 for members), LIMITED SEATING, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Arcane Project: An Evening of Glass slides, Magic Lantern Projections, and Antique Technologies. 
  Thursday, June 4th, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction. An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal 
  Friday, June 5th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

NEWLY ANNOUNCED EVENTS

• My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor and Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and The Radio Illustrated Lecture with Chiara Ambrosio, London Based Filmmaker
  Monday, June 22nd, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

ALL UPCOMING EVENTS

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part I - Alchemy it's Language and Image or How to Read an Alchemical Text. An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. 
  Wednesday, June 3rd, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here.

• Morbid Anatomy and Art in the Age Present: The Dilettanti Society Happy Hour - Cocktails and Show and Tell in the Morbid Anatomy Library featuring Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities presenting his collection of ancient and modern penises
  Thursday June 4th, 6:30pm - 8pm, $20 ($12 for members), LIMITED SEATING, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Arcane Project: An evening of glass slides, magic lantern projections, and antique technologies. 
  Thursday, June 4th, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction. An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal 
  Friday, June 5th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• Anthropomorphic Rabbit Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman 
  Saturday, June 6th, 12pm - 7pm, $300 (includes admission to the museum), $300, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Fancy Chicken Taxidermy Class with Divya Anatharaman
  Sunday, June 7th, 12pm - 7pm, $400 (includes admission to the museum), SOLD OUT (info here)

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part 2 - Alchemy: Substance and Symbol. An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. Wednesday, June 10th, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here.

• Capulet Gynecologist, Montague Onanist: Medieval Sex, Renaissance Death, and Romeo and Juliet. An Illustrated Lecture with Lois Leveen 
  Thursday June 11th, 8pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Anthropomorphic Insect Shadowbox Workshop with Daisy Tainton Saturday 
  Saturday, June 13th, 1pm - 4 pm, $75, Tickets (and more info) here

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part 3 - Alchemical Methods and Tools both Physical and Metaphysical.  An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. 
  Wednesday, June 17th, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here

• Tarantula Preservation Class Thursday with Divya Anantharaman
  Thursday, June 18th, 6:30pm - 9:30pm, $80 (includes admission to the museum), SOLD OUT (info here)

• The Emerald Tablet - Alchemical Distilation Workshop with Brian Cotnoir. 
  Saturday, June 20th, 12pm - 6pm, $100, Tickets (and more info) here.

• My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor and Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and The Radio Illustrated Lecture with Chiara Ambrosio, London Based Filmmaker
  Monday, June 22nd, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• A Desire for Dramaticism: Semiotics of the 1980s Goth Subculture: An illustrated lecture with Andi Harriman 
  Tuesday, June 23rd, 8pm - 10 pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• Search for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, An Illustrated Lecture with Peter Nevramont. 
  Wednesday, June 24th, 8pm - 10pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here

• "Witchcraft Through the Ages” (Haxan) – Polka music! Butter Churns!! 16mm silent film screening with Victrola!!! Presented and choreographed by Joel Schlemowitz 
  Thursday, June 25th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• "Witchcraft Through the Ages” (Haxan) – Polka music! Butter Churns!! 16mm silent film screening with Victrola!!! Presented and choreographed by Joel Schlemowitz 
  Thursday, June 26th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)
  

• Morbid Anatomy Flea Market
  Sunday, June 28th, 12pm - 6pm, FREE, more info here.
  

• Madness and Meaning: An Illustrated Lecture with Andrew Scull, Author of Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine
  Monday, June 29th, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Movie Mike Presents : Morbid Movie Madness - A Survey of Serials of the 30s and 40s First Chapters of Thrilling Tales in 16mm!
  Saturday, June 30th, $10, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Psychology of Magic, an Illustrated Lecture with Robert Teszka 
  Thursday, July 2nd, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• The Right Mixture: The Theory and History of the Four Humours (as told with cocktails), an Illustrated lecture with Michael Goyette, PhD 
  Thursday, July 9th, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction. An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal  
  Friday July 10th, 8pm - 10pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here).

• Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class, One or Two Headed! with Divya Anantharaman
  Saturday, July 11th, 12pm - 6pm, $110 for one, $125 for two headed (all tickets include admission to the museum), SOLD OUT (info here).

• Chick Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman 
  Sunday, July 12th, 12pm-6:30pm,  $185 for one, $200 for two headed (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Stolen Armor, Bullet Sculptures, Photos of the Dead: Soldiers' Souvenirs, or The Things They Carried (Home). A Panel with Joanna Scutts, Lauren Walsh and Susan Harlan 
  Tuesday July 14th, 8pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• 'The Gothic Sensibility: Victorian 'Gloomths' and the Contemporary 'Death Curious': An Illustrated Lecture with Romany Reagan. 
  Tuesday, July 21st, 8pm - 10pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• Placebos, Nocebos and Voodoo Medicine, An Illustrated Lecture with Mark W Green MD, FAAN Professor of Neurology, Anesthesiology, and Rehabilitation Medicine 
  Wednesday, July 22nd, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Jackalope Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Saturday, July 25th, 12pm - 6pm, $250 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Rat/Guinea Pigs Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Sunday, July 26th, 12pm - 6pm, $200 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Movie Mike Presents : Morbid Movie Madness - Bluebeard with John Carradine as the serial strangler of women in old Paris in 16mm!
  Tuesday, July 28th, 8pm, $10, Tickets (and more info) here.

• 'The Gothic Sensibility: Victorian 'Gloomths' and the Contemporary 'Death Curious' : An Illustrated Lecture with Romany Reagan 
  Friday, July 29th, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• The Even More Disturbing and Absurd World of Medical Patents: An Illustrated Lecture with Eric Indin, Registered Patent Attorney. 
  Thursday, July 30th,  8pm - 10pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Chipmunk Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman
  Saturday, August 1st, 12pm - 6pm, $185 (all tickets include admission to the museum), SOLD OUT ( info here)

• Skunk Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman
  Sunday, August 2nd, 12pm - 6pm, $450 (includes admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Evening Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman 
  Wednesday, August 5th, 6:30pm - 10:30pm, $110 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction: An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal Goldsmith
  Friday, August 7th, 8pm - 10 PM, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• The Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell: A Memoir: An Illustrated Lecture with Mark Hartzman
  Wednesday, August 19th, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Starling Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Saturday, August 22nd, 12pm - 6pm, $275 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Rat/ Guinea Pig with Wings Gaff Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Sunday, August 23rd, 12pm - 6pm, $235 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Hannibal Lecter, Book Collector, An Illustrated Lecture with Elisabeth Brander, Rare Book Librarian at Washington University 
  Thursday, October 8th, 8pm, Tickets (and more info) here

Image: Dilettanti Members by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Frau Welt

An allegorical figure occurring frequently in medieval literature. Seen from the front she is beautiful; when she turns round, her back is a mass of decay, maggots, and noisome creatures. ...

-- Frau Welt, The Oxford Companion to German Literature

More--and image sourced--here.

The Ether Dome: Guest Post by Sarah Alger

Following is a fascinating guest post about "The Ether Dome" and the world of pre-anesthesia surgery by Sarah Alger, director of the Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital. You can follow her on Twitter at @slodoena.

“The horror of great darkness, and the sense of desertion by God and man, bordering close on despair, which swept through my mind and overwhelmed my heart, I can never forget, however gladly I would do so ... I still recall with unwelcome vividness the spreading out of the instruments, the twisting of the tourniquet, the first incision, the fingering of the sawed bone, the sponge pressed on the flap, the tying of the blood-vessels, the stitching of the skin, the bloody dismembered limb lying on the floor.”
Such was surgery before anesthesia, as described by George Wilson, who underwent an ankle amputation in 1843. 

When Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston was designed in the early 1800s, its operating theater was placed under a dome at the top of the building both to admit natural light through skylights and windows and to allow surgical patients’ screams to drift up and out of earshot of patients in the wards below. 

Not only was surgery a horror for the patient, it was also a trial for the surgeon. Contending with a conscious, writhing patient, surgeons were forced to be swift. Head surgeon and hospital co-founder John Collins Warren could reputedly amputate a limb in 40 seconds. 

While Warren was wrestling with his patients, about 100 miles away in Hartford, Conn., a dentist named Horace Wells attended a demonstration in which volunteers were given nitrous oxide—laughing gas—to get silly for the audience’s amusement. The gas seemed to dull pain in these volunteers, he observed, so he wondered: Could it help his dental patients? After a dozen successful painless tooth extractions in his practice (including on himself), he persuaded Harvard Medical School to allow him to demonstrate before a crowd. Yet his patient did claim to feel pain, perhaps because of inadequate dosage, and Wells was subjected to cries of “Humbug!” Wells slunk back to Hartford, discouraged. Yet his young apprentice, William T.G. Morton, picked up the research where Wells left off, befriending a Harvard chemist named Charles Jackson, who suggested that Morton experiment with sulfuric ether. (Ether, like nitrous oxide, was used as a party drug in so-called “ether frolics”.) Jackson appeared to know that ether could be useful in surgery, but for reasons lost to history, never acted on that knowledge. After successfully experimenting on family pets, himself and his dental patients, he lobbied to demonstrate on a surgical patient at Mass General. 

On the morning of October 16, 1846, a 21-year-old printer named Gilbert Abbott was brought into the operating theater. Warren, who was to operate on a vascular malformation on Abbott’s neck, and the assembled crowd in the tiered seats above waited for Morton to arrive. Finally, half an hour late, Morton arrived toting a glass inhaler he had commissioned for the demonstration. Warren, with impatience, stated: “Sir, your patient.” Morton used the inhaler to administer the gas, and when it appeared that Abbott had dropped off, he replied to Warren: “Sir, your patient.” Warren performed the surgery without incident, and the assembly waited for Abbott to awaken. When he did, he was asked: Did he feel any pain? “Has the procedure begun yet?” he responded, for he had felt only a dull scratching. At this Warren turned to the crowd and intoned: “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.” (For a 1936 silent reenactment of the event, starring contemporary Mass General staff in fake sideburns, click here.) 

Just a month later, Mass General surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow published a paper in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal about the demonstration, and from there the word spread. In Paris, the first operation using ether occurred December 15; in London, December 21. By 1847 the news had carried worldwide. Meanwhile, in Boston, dentist Nathan Cooley Keep became the first to administer ether for obstetrics—to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife Fanny. “I am very sorry you all thought me so rash and naughty in trying the ether,” she wrote to her family. “I feel proud to be the pioneer to less suffering for poor, weak womankind.” It wasn’t just her family who had feared for her—it took a while for her to find someone who would administer ether. The embrace of anesthesia was not universal—physicians and the public alike had their qualms. Little was known about dosage, so the risk of death from anesthesia did exist, as did worries about ether’s flammability. Moreover, religious objections abounded—pain, not least in childbirth, was viewed as God’s will. Robert Liston, before performing that first surgery under ether in London, deemed ether a “Yankee dodge.” Yet upon witnessing how well it worked, he said: “This Yankee dodge beats mesmerism [a previous medical fad] hollow.” 

In 1853, Queen Victoria was administered chloroform at the birth of Prince Leopold, further legitimizing anesthesia’s use in obstetrics, and in the United States, the battlefield injuries of the Civil War sped its adoption. 

Yet as this miracle took hold, the key players in its discovery descended into controversy. Horace Wells, Charles Jackson and William T.G. Morton waged bitter pamphleteering wars for 20 years over who should get the credit. (Jackson, it must be noted, also claimed to have given Samuel Morse the idea for the telegraph—to what extent that’s true, we’ll never know.) The debate reached Congress, which ruled in favor of Morton because he had published first. Wells moved to New York, was arrested for throwing acid on prostitutes, and killed himself in jail after taking chloroform; Jackson died at McLean Asylum outside Boston; and Morton, becoming feverish after reading a newspaper article arguing that Jackson should get most of the credit, threw himself into a pond in Central Park and died soon after. Meanwhile, a Georgia country doctor named Crawford Long, having attended ether frolics, had conducted a successful painless surgery in March 1842, but did not publish his news until well after the Mass General demonstration, escaping both the limelight and the concurrent misery. 

The surgical theater at Mass General, which came to be known as the Ether Dome, still stands in the hospital’s original building. A teaching skeleton, a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvedere, and an Egyptian mummy named Padihershef, who was a gift to the hospital in the 1820s, all keep watch over the Dome as they did in 1846. A newer addition is a 2000 oil painting recreating a moment during the surgery. Abbott is bound to the surgical chair by a leather strap, as was typical practice then, but there is no need for it: His hands are slack. He is at peace. 

Image: Ether Dome. Massachusetts General Hospital.

In Search of Anatomical Venuses and Popular Anatomical Imagery!

We are currently in the process of researching imagery related to popular anatomical display, anatomically themed panopticons, Anatomical Venuses, or eroticisized reclining female wax figures. If you have any suggestions, please email joanna [at] morbidanatomymuseum [dot] org! Thank you!

Image: Poster from the Roca collection. Collection Family Coolen, Antwerp/Museum Dr Guislain, Ghent, Belgium. More here.

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future: An Interview with Paleofuture's Matt Novak by Cristina Preda

Following is a guest post by Cristina Preda in which she interviews Matt Novak of the Paleofuture blog about one of her favorite books residing in the Morbid Anatomy Library: Corn and Horrigan's Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future.

In 1984, the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. opened Yesterday’s Tomorrows, an exhibition showcasing hundreds of objects and ephemera from the American mid-century as they pertained to people’s visions of the future, and a book by the same name was published as a companion. Written by the exhibit’s curators, historians Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan, Yesterday’s Tomorrows explores the communities, homes, transportation, weapons and warfare of our supposed future. Copies of the book eventually found their way into the Morbid Anatomy Library and into the hands of Matt Novak, writer of Gizmodo’s Paleofuture blog. I spoke to Matt recently about American retro-futures, collecting, and how an exhibit he never saw changed his life. 

How did you come to discover Yesterday’s Tomorrows? 
Back in 2007 I was finishing up school at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and was looking for a topic for a blog for this class I had started. It was a writing class where you start a blog, and I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. There’d been this idea that I’d been thinking about for a long time which was how people of the past imagined the future. So, I started the blog and expected it to be just something that would run its course through the class. The more I researched it, the more I loved the topic, and I came across this book called Yesterday’s Tomorrows which really helped solidify that this was something worth exploring further. After I was done with school, I reached out to one of the authors of the book, Brian Horrigan, and it turned out he lived literally a mile down the street from me. 

You mentioned that he gifted you some of the artifacts from the original exhibit. What were they?
Some books and magazines, some really unique one-of-a-kind stuff like personal letters from Buckminster Fuller, some photos. [Brian Horrigan] interviewed Buckminster Fuller shortly before he died in the early eighties and gave me some recordings from that, illustrations and photos from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, film stills from old futuristic movies like Things To Come, old newspaper clippings, and a bunch of things he used to help do the Smithsonian exhibit and the book.  

Did you consider yourself a collector prior to receiving those items?
I was kind of a collector before that. I almost immediately started buying old books and magazines. Part of the mission of the blog was to introduce new things to the internet. So many people think of blogging as just regurgitating images and reblogging, and I was trying to digitize stuff to help contribute to the strange, beautiful, weird thing that we call the internet. I think that’s part of why I was lucky enough to be successful with it. I was putting stuff online that people hadn’t seen yet. 

What is your most prized item?
That’s a tough question! There’s this one letter from Buckminster Fuller that’s written in his own hand. My favorite part about it is he underlines the year 1974 and puts a couple exclamation points after it. I just love that detail that speaks to his excitement that it’s the future. I have a couple video phones from the 1980s. I’m obsessed with the video phone because it’s something that arrived but not in the form that we expected. I think that that’s what makes it interesting—that even if someone is absolutely correct the prediction is often in the eye of the beholder. 

A lot of architectural imagery up until the 50s depicts these grand vertical sprawls with impossibly tall buildings interconnected by bridges and roadways. After WWII, communities begin to sprawl outward. Would you agree that the shift was informed by, say, McCarthyism and espousing the virtues of American capitalism and individualism? And in this regard, does the role of prognosticators become implicitly entangled with toeing the party line?
If you’re looking at consumer-based futurism, of course there’s a certain aspect of conformity. I think I take issue with the idea that the first half of the 20th century was only about moving upward. That’s certainly a vision of the future that architects embraced, especially in the 20s with the huge rise of the skyscrapers. But there’s significant pushback when you look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of utopian futuristic society in the 1930s. His Broadacre scheme was a scheme to push people out—it was an early vision of suburban America. We often like to think that a dominant narrative of any given era’s futurism is the only one. We have to remind ourselves that people in any given generation don’t all think alike. I fall into this trap everyday and I have to continually pull myself back and remind myself that no matter how dominant a narrative was, there was always someone who said, “wait a second here, this not how it should be done and this is not how it’s going to be.” 

I noticed that the workplace of tomorrow is missing from the book and that struck me as odd since Americans are so work-obsessed. You talk about this in The Late Great American Promise of Less Work. What happened that made it so un-American to imagine a less laborious future?
It seems to me that we have decided that it’s un-American to aspire to work less, which is very strange. Even people in the 1950s and 60s who were conservatively-minded believed that taking long vacations was a sign that you were doing something right. There does seem to be this incredible shift that happens in the second half of the 20th century where it’s no longer the ideal, where desiring to work less so that you can either spend more time at leisure or with your family is somehow seen as un-American. It’s disconcerting, especially given that we don’t have the same rights that a lot of other developed nations do when it comes to maternity leave and guaranteed vacation time. It’s almost as if there’s been a narrative that has totally warped and is currently poisoning our culture that the only thing you should aspire to is to work yourself to death.

Do you think there’s any getting back to that mid-century dream?
I don’t see the tide turning any time soon, but I think it very well could if the wealth gap continues to grow. So much of our current troubles have to do with that wealth gap, and if it continues to to grow there will be people who realize that government does have a role to play in certain things such as parental leave. These are basic things that every other developed country has figured out that aren’t even on the national agenda.  

Regarding the home of tomorrow, you point out that people in those years were preoccupied with protecting their homes from the elements. How much of that had to do with actual comfort and how much was escapism vis-a-vis fear of nuclear warfare?
There was almost a “fallout shelter chic” to a lot of things. You see this in a lot of mid-century modern design. 

You’ve promised to eat the sun if the AeroMobil flying car is actually released to the public in two years. I agree with your points as to why it won’t happen. It’s so impractical that it’s stupid, and we need to get over the flying car. Where would you like to see future transportation go instead?
Personally, a combination of more mass transit and better alternative fuel for passenger cars. I live in LA, and for a couple years I didn’t have a car which astounded people. 

The last chapter in the book deals with the weapons and warfare of the future. Have we accepted that war is just inevitable for life on earth, or do we like it? I feel like futurism, and especially retrofuturism, is generally so optimistic that it’s eery. Why aren’t we imagining peace? Why are we just thinking of better, bigger ways to bomb everyone?
I think because our economy depends so much on it that we can’t imagine any other way. There’s a couple different angles by which to approach this. One is to look at removing troops from the battlefield. That was one tactic of making war less horrific. There were some visions of the future from the 1930s where giant robots would do battle, and that plays into the idea of remote war. You’re seeing this a lot today where someone sitting at a computer screen is controlling a drone halfway around the world, and that’s really not a new idea but it is one that’s becoming very much a reality in a lot of aspects of warfare today. We’re also seeing that those tactics don’t necessarily work better when it comes to defeating an enemy. When you can’t see the enemy you don’t know if you’re bombing your intended target or a mass of school children. There’s also this idea that we see time and again of people who thought that if you make war so horrific it would no longer be a thing. Nuclear weapons would make war so horrific that nations would no longer go to war, which obviously wasn’t the case. And the same goes for other futuristic weapons—let’s make things so bad that there’ll just be a stalemate and no one would ever go to war. Obviously, that never pans out. 

Joseph Corn’s challenge to you was that you never accept preconceived notions about people and their attitudes toward the future. What advice would you give someone just beginning to approach this field today?
I would say if you’re interested in this topic, look in unusual places for aspects of futurism. It’s so easy to pick up a sci-fi book from the 50s and say this is a vision of the future. What interests me more these days are weird nooks and crannies where you can find a lot of interesting futurisms in areas you wouldn’t expect. This is what makes the topic so fascinating to me. It’s not just flying cars and jetpacks. There’s the futurism of social movements, the futurism of utopian communities, the futurism of pets. You can look at any topic and there’s people who had predictions about that particular area and had some really unique ways of looking at it. The study of past futures has definitely matured since I started eight years ago, and you can find all sorts of weird stories in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be. 

IMAGE LIST

1. Illustration from Hugo Gernsback’s Ralph 124C 41+ by Frank R. Paul, 1925
2. “Trade Your Troubles for a Bubble,” back cover from Amazing Stories, 1946
3. Rick Guidice, “Sport in Space Colony,” circa 1977
4. Syd Mead, “Megastructure,” circa 1969
5. Still from the H.G. Wells film Things to Come, 1936.
6. Un voyage dans la lune, 1902.

The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760-1860, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Through July 26, 2015

When in New Haven for the joint Medical Museums Association/American Association for the History of Medicine meeting, I was lucky enough to see, with Michael Sappol and Eva Åhrén, the wonderful exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760-1860 at the Yale University Art Gallery. A fabulous and thought provoking exhibition drawing from the rich collections of The Yale Center for British Art, and intending to challenge "the traditional notion of the Romantic artist as a brooding genius given to introversion and fantasy. Instead, the exhibition’s eight thematic sections juxtapose arresting works that reveal the Romantics as attentive explorers of their natural and cultural worlds."

Some highlights: (in order, top to bottom): a tempera painting by William Blake of the Madonna and Child from 1825; hand-painted pages from Blake's "America. A Prophecy," 1793; John Martin's "The Deluge," 1834; "A Lion Attacking a Horse," 1762, by George Stubbs; and James Gillray's "The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeance," 1793.

I highly recommend going to see this exhibition if you can! Its up through July 26, 2015. You can find out more--and see more images!--here.

X-Ray Audio: Guest Post by Stephen Coates of The Real Tuesday Weld

Below is a guest post in which our good friend Stephen Coates of The Real Tuesday Weld tells the fascinating story of what he terms "X-Ray Audio," aka Soviet-era bootleg records made from second hand X-Ray plates and containing forbidden western music such as jazz and rock and roll; See images above for a few examples.

On Friday, May 8th, Coates and Aleks Kolkowski will teach us more about the subject in an image, film and sound filled presentation at The Morbid Anatomy Museum entitled The X-Ray Audio Project: The Incredible story of Bootleg Technology, Cold War Culture and Human Endeavour, sponsored by Art in the Age spirits. You can find out more  here. You can also find more about Coates' project--and see more images and hear audio!--on his X-Ray Audio project website by clicking here.

X-RAY AUDIO

They are images of pain and damage inscribed with the ghostly sounds of forbidden pleasure. They are fragile pictures of the inside of Soviet citizens overlayed with the music they secretly loved. I first saw one when I was wandering in a market in St. Petersburg a few years ago with Russian friends. It looked somewhat like record and somewhat like an x-ray. My friends didn't know what it was and the man who sold it to me seemed dismissive.  I brought it home and tried to learn more. My research was the beginning of journey that led to a strange and poignant story. It is a story of Forbidden Culture, Bootleg technology and most of all, of Human Endeavor.  

In the Soviet Union in the years after the Second World War, a lot of music was forbidden. Most Western music was forbidden just because it was Western. The official reason given might be that it was decadent or bourgeois, but really it was just because it was American or British and we were the enemy. A lot of Russian music was also forbidden. Anything made by emigres, those White Russians who had left after the revolution, was off-limits because by definition they were considered traitors, whatever their repertoire and even if they had once been approved of. And much domestic Russian music was forbidden, or at the very least deemed 'unofficial'. Why?

From 1932, all Soviet art, literature, poetry, film and music was subject to a censor. The ideologues of the Soviet Union determined that all the arts had to be in the service of socialist realism. Self expression was out. Much popular  music, especially those in the  'criminal' or 'gyspy' genres were deemed to be 'low culture' and would not pass the censor.  Perhaps it showed the dark side of Socialist Realism or portrayed violence, jealousy or the rough and tumble of love and lust and life.  Even certain rhythms such as the foxtrot and tango were forbidden as they were said to lead to lewd behaviour and general frivolity.

But people had a huge  desire to hear this music, it was their culture. They wanted to hear songs that were played in the gulag or sung by those who had returned; songs from earlier, less-controlled times; songs by artists who they had once loved  but were now forbidden, even songs they had heard played by a local singer at a secret concert. And of course there was a demand for the exotic, cool sounds of Western music: boogie-woogie; rock & roll or jazz. But official records of this music would be rare and very expensive. And so a bootleg culture arose.

We had such a culture in the West too once  - illicit live recordings of concerts made on vinyl or tape in the days before the internet changed everything. But even if illegal, these were relatively easy to make. In the Soviet Union after the war, it was not so easy. The bootleggers' first technical problem, obtaining a machine to record with, was relatively straightforward. Literature existed from the 1930s explaining recording techniques and various recording machines had been brought back from Germany as trophies after the war. These could be adapted or copied but a further problem existed. You couldn't just go and buy the discs to record on. The state completely controlled the means of manufacturing records.

But an extraordinary alternative source of raw materials was discovered - used x-ray plates obtained from local hospitals. And that is where this story begins. Many older people in Russia remember seeing strange vinyl-type discs when they were young. The discs had partial images of skeletons on them and were called 'bones' or 'ribs'. They contained ghostly music - music that had been forbidden. This practice of copying music onto x-rays got going in Leningrad, a port where it was easier to obtain illicit records, but it spread, first to Moscow and then throughout the Soviet Union. 

With the photographer Paul Heartfield, for the last couple of years I have been interviewing and collecting images for The X-Ray Audio project, an initiative to record the testimony of people who were involved in this incredible trade. As well as live events, an exhibition and a documentary, we will be publishing a book about the x-ray bootlegs and the people who made them with Strange Attractor Press in Autumn 2015.

And we are also making new x-ray records. At our live events, sound artist and researcher Aleks Kolkowski cuts new plates using a vintage analogue record-cutting lathe from music written especially for the occasion - or from live performances

X-Ray Audio is a story about strange skeletal flexi-discs for sure, but it is really a story of people. People for whom music held a value it probably never can for us. People for who the sound of the music they really loved was only available 'off the bone'.

Stephen Coates
www.x-rayaudio.squarespace.com

Images: X-Ray Records, Photos by Paul Heartfield

The Paris Morgue as Portent and the Medical Museum as Threat in George du Maurier's Trilby, 1894

A few days ago, Resident Film Programmer and Arcane Media Specialist Joel Schlemowitz screened the 1931 film Svengali at The Morbid Anatomy Museum. Although the film had many charms, it left me yearning for the novel on which it was based, George du Maurier's Trilby, an instant sensation upon its publication as a serial in 1894. A wonderful (if flawed) book and hugely popular in its time, it is little read today, probably because of the overtly antisemitic character of Svengali, the infernal Jewish mesmerist and musical virtuoso who drives much of the stories action.

Despite this, there is much to recommend this strange and idiosyncratic book; although meandering and uneven, it is worth reading if only for the sequences which try to suggest the unimaginable and otherworldly beauty of "la Svengali's" voice. Also of note is the role played by the Paris Morgue, which acts as a kind of running theme and portent throughout the book, looming over the painters in their studio. At the time the action in the book takes place--the mid 19th century--the Paris Morgue was a popular tourist attraction, drawing crowds eager to view the bodies of the unclaimed dead which were laid out behind large plate glass windows, ostensibly for the purposes of identification. You can find out more about this phenomenon here.

As if all this were not good enough, there is an incredible moment in the book where Svengali torments our hapless heroine with whispered threats of putting her bones in a handsome case at the museum of the École de Médecine; the quote is a bit long, but worth including here in its entirety.

The quote follows; if you like what you read, I highly recommend giving the entire book a read! You can do so online by clicking here, or buy a copy of the book here.

"Ach, Drilpy," he would say, on a Sunday afternoon, "how beautiful you are! It drives me mad! I adore you. I like you thinner; you have such beautiful bones! Why do you not answer my letters?... What do you know of Monsieur Alfred de Musset? We have got a poet too, my Drilpy. His name is Heinrich Heine... He adores French grisettes. He married one. Her name is Mathilde, and she has got süssen füssen, like you. He would adore you too, for your beautiful bones; he would like to count them one by one, for he is very playful, like me. And, ach! what a beautiful skeleton you will make! And very soon, too, because you do not smile on your madly-loving Svengali... You shall have a nice little mahogany glass case all to yourself in the museum of the École de Médecine, and Svengali shall come in his new fur-lined coat, smoking his big cigar of the Havana, and push the dirty carabins out of the way, and look through the holes of your eyes into your stupid empty skull, and up the nostrils of your high bony sounding-board of a nose without either a tip or a lip to it, and into the roof of your big mouth, with your thirty-two big English teeth, and between your big ribs into your big chest, where the big leather lungs used to be, and say, 'Ach! what a pity she had no more music in her than a big tomcat!' And then he will look all down your bones to your poor crumbling feet, and say, 'Ach! what a fool she was not to answer Svengali's letters!' and the dirty carabins shall—"

 ... Then Svengali, scowling, would play Chopin's funeral march more divinely than ever; and where the pretty, soft part comes in, he would whisper to Trilby, "That is Svengali coming to look at you in your little mahogany glass case!"  

... Besides which, as he played the lovely melody he would go through a ghoulish pantomime, as though he were taking stock of the different bones in her skeleton with greedy but discriminating approval. And when he came down to the feet, he was almost droll in the intensity of his terrible realism. But Trilby did not appreciate this exquisite fooling, and felt cold all over.

Fragments of Faith: Victorian Hairwork: A New Film by Ronni Thomas for Morbid Anatomy Museum Presents!

Below, film maker in residence Ronni Thomas--director of The Midnight Archive--introduces his newest film for our new Morbid Anatomy Museum Presents series, on Victorian hair art jewelry, with Karen Bachmann, teacher of our popular class on the same topic.

You can view the film above or by clicking here; Stay tuned for more episodes which will premiere monthly on our new You Tube channel, which can be found here!

Victorian Hair work was one of those things I just didn't 'get' at first... But I looked into it anyway. Karen Bachmann is a friend, colleague and fellow NYC born reformed (to some degree) street punk, and happens to be the authority on the subject, combining academic knowledge with charm and flair... It wasn't until I screened the film for my sister in law that I finally 'got it'. She has no specific interest in the morbid or the tragically designed, but she reacted pretty impressively to this film... Forgive me for this but: it's hair, AND jewelry combined... It's for women... (With impeccable taste). Once I shifted my perspective from subjective to objective, it all made sense and flowed editorially. These are amazingly designed works of elaborate art incorporating skill and sentiment in pitch perfect harmony.  

Happy Easter Everybody!

Happy Easter, everyone! And to celebrate this anniversary of Jesus Christ's post-death resurrection: Piero della Francesca's wonderful mural "Resurrection," completed in the 1460s.

Image and credit sourced here.

The Lost Museum Symposium: Providence, Rhode Island, May 6-8, 2015

We are very excited to announce an upcoming conference taking place at Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island from May 6-8 on the topic of "Lost Museums."

Speakers will include Morbid Anatomy Museum creative director Joanna Ebenstein with "Notes on a Speculative Recreation of the Lost Cabinet of Dutch Anatomist, Moralist, Museologist and Artist Frederik Ruysch; UCL's Petra Lange-Berndt with "Pedagogy of the Ruin: Mark Dion’s Academy of Things, Dresden 2014; former Coney Island Museum director Aaron Beebe on "Enthusiasm, Wonder, and “Stuff” in the New Dime Museum;" and a keynote by Rosamund Purcell. 

Tickets, which appear to be free, can be found here. Details and full schedule follow; you can find out more here. Hope very much to see you there!

Held in conjunction with the year-long exhibition project on Brown’s lost Jenks Museum, the symposium addresses the history of museums from a new direction: not their founding, but their disappearance. We know a great deal about how museums are born and how new collections come into being, but not nearly enough about how these fragile institutions pass out of existence, how artifacts decay and disappear as times and interests change.

What happens to a collection when once-prized objects are no longer seem valuable? Or when ethical standards shift, as in the movement to repatriate cultural artifacts to the peoples or nations from which they were taken? How and why are specimens and artifacts deaccessioned or traded away? How do changing ideas about the evidentiary, educational, and research values of artifacts affect what seems worth saving? How do wars, natural disasters, and other cataclysmic events shape collections and impact institutions of heritage, preservation, memory, and knowledge production? What can we learn from museums that have been forgotten and then revived in a new cultural context? Is permanence a virtue, or might we embrace notions of ephemerality in museums?

SCHEDULE

WEDNESDAY, MAY 6

TALK and RECEPTION @ Edna Lawrence Nature Lab

5:00 – 6:00 P.M. Andrew Yang | Gleaning New Meaning: Reintegrating Collections with the Expanding Ecology

6:00 – 7:00 P.M. Reception

THURSDAY, MAY 7

LIGHT BREAKFAST Pastries and fruit provided

8:30 – 9:00 A.M. 

SESSION 1: COLLECTING THE EPHEMERAL @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

9:30 – 11:15 A.M.

• Eric Crosby | Uncollectable: Walker Art Center Commissions
• Hanna Holling | On the Relative Duration of the Impermanent and the Aesthetics of Change in Museums
• Anthony Marcellini and Emily Zimmerman | The Museum of Obsolescence
• Christine Delucia | Fugitive Collections in New England Indian Country: The Afterlives of an Early American Museum at Yale College

KEYNOTE @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

11:30 A.M. – 12:15 P.M.

• Elizabeth Merritt 

LUNCH Lunch provided 

12:15 – 1:00 P.M.

SESSION 2: SOCIAL CHANGE and REVOLUTION @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

1:00 – 2:30 P.M.

• Jenelle Davis | Filling the Void: Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art and the Struggle for Recovery in Post-Conflict Sarajevo
• Eloisa Dodero | The Musaeum Kircherianum at the Roman College in Rome: A Lost Idea of a Museum
• Petra Lange-Berndt | Pedagogy of the Ruin: Mark Dion’s Academy of Things, Dresden 2014

TEA and TOURS

2:30 – 3:45 P.M. 

SESSION 3: AUTHENTICITY @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

3:45 – 5:30 P.M.

• Crystal Ngo | Original Copy: Museums and the Economy of Authenticity
• Ruth Horry | Henry Wellcome’s Lost statues of Babylonian Gods: Undisciplined Objects and Loss of Value in the Museum
• Joanna Ebenstein | Notes on a Speculative Recreation of the Lost Cabinet of Dutch Anatomist, Moralist, Museologist and Artist Frederik Ruysch
• Allison Loader | A Short Stop before the Exhibitionary Complex

PUB SESSIONS @ American Flatbread

6:30 – 8:00 P.M.

• Aaron Beebe | Enthusiasm, Wonder, and “Stuff” in the New Dime Museum
• Gigi Naglak and Hannah Sisk | Peale’s Museum: An Interactive Curatorial Experiment
• Otis Nemo
• Laurel Waycott | The New York Aquarium: A Case Study 

FRIDAY, MAY *

LIGHT BREAKFAST @ John Carter Brown Library Select pastries and; fruit provided

8:30 – 9:00 A.M. 

KEYNOTE @ John Carter Brown Library

9:00 – 10:00 A.M.

• Rosamund Purcell

SESSION 4: PRIVATE/PUBLIC MUSEUMS @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

10:15 – 11:45 A.M.

• Andrew McClellan | Death and the Museum: The Case of Edmond de Goncourt
• Mary Terrall | Delusions of Permanence: The Life and Legacy of Réaumur’s Natural History Collections
• Courtney Fullilove | The Hair of Distinguished Persons in the Patent Office Building Museum

LUNCH AND 2 SHOWS @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology Sandwiches provided

12:00 – 1:30 P.M.

• Emily Avera and Bryan Markowitz | Reanimating Phenomenal Others: How to Bring Museum Artifacts Back to Life
• Maia Wright and Kate Jarboe | The George W. Bush Library and Museum Museum

SESSION 5: LOST IN THE MUSEUM @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

1:30 – 3:00 P.M.

• Mirjam Brusius and Kavita Singh | A Philosophy of Deep Storage
• Sean Silver | The Kineton Valley Medal, Lost and Found
• Amy Kohut | More than Birds: Collection Narratives and Cultural History at NMNH 

COFFEE BREAK

3:00 – 3:15 P.M. 

SESSION 6: USING COLLECTIONS @ Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

3:15 – 5:00 P.M.

• Ethan Lasser | The Case of the Walrus Tusk: Circulating Specimens and Harvard’s Lost Museum
• Judy Gradwohl | Intentional Impermanence: Building a National Teaching Collection
• Maria Zytark | “Overdue Notice: Please Bring Back the Mummy’s Hand”: America’s First Circulating Museum
• Victoria Cain | The Weight of the Image: Lantern Slides, Education and the American Museum

CLOSING PERFORMANCE @ Edna Lawrence Nature Lab

6:30 – 7:30 P.M.

• The Jenks Society
• Hollis Mickey

"George's Arms" : A Guest Post by Evan Michelson, Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence and Star of TV's Oddities

Following is a guest post by Evan Michelson, Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence and star of TV's Oddities. Here, she tells the fascinating story of "George's Arms" (seen above), her contribution to our current Collector's Cabinet exhibition, which closes March 29th.

You can see Evan speak in person about objects in her collection at our closing party on March 29th, on which more here; you can also purchase a full color, illustrated exhibition catalog with texts written by the collectors (only eight dollars!) here.

Antique and vintage prosthetics are uncanny, beautiful objects. They are almost always anonymous, whatever stories they have to tell being limited (at best) to a name inked or carved into the wood. This particular pair of prosthetic arms, however, comes not just with a name, but with an inspiring tale of survival, courage and human resilience. They belonged to Mr. George Hunlock of Danville, PA, a brakeman for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The railroad carried both freight (primarily coal) and passengers along a busy route from Pennsylvania to upstate New York. These arms date to the turn of the 20th century, but Mr. Hunlock’s horrific accident occurred a bit earlier, sometime in the 1880s. At that time, George Hunlock’s job as railroad brakeman was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

In the early days of the railroad brakes had to be gradually, manually engaged on each individual car. This meant that the brakeman had to jump from car to car on the roof of a moving train (often braving the bitter cold and dangerous, icy conditions). On freight lines the brakeman usually rode in an open cabin on the outside of the car; sometimes he simply clung to a ladder, or even rode on the roof. In the summer the brakeman baked in the sun, in the winter he froze in snow and ice. When it rained, he was drenched. It was dirty, exhausting work. The brakes were engaged using heavy wheels or levers; it was a gradual process that involved repeated trips back-and-forth along the length of the train. It was not uncommon for brakemen to be mangled or killed on the job (one early report estimated that 10 brakemen died every day in the US in the performance of their duties). Brakemen were very poorly paid, and the job was often allotted to the illiterate and uneducated (presumably because such people were considered to be the most expendable). In the 19th century the railroad companies were shielded from lawsuits, and the costs associated with injury were often not compensated: even if a brakeman survived his accident, his family was still facing financial ruin.

There is no detailed record of the accident itself, but George Hunlock (like so many before him) apparently slipped underneath a moving railroad car, and his arms were crushed (or possibly severed altogether). Such an accident would be catastrophic today, but in the late 19th century survival itself would have seemed nearly miraculous. Antiseptics, anesthesia and the sterilization of instruments in surgical amputations were still relatively primitive procedures, and pain killers were opiate derivatives that eventually caused addiction. Mr. Hunlock undoubtedly benefitted, however, from advancements made during the recently-concluded American Civil War, which had brought about a revolution in the science of limb amputation.

It is extraordinary, then, that George Hunlock did not just survive his terrible ordeal - he thrived. He was given another job at the railroad, where he served as a watchman at crossings, using his wooden arms to wave a lantern to warn of oncoming trains. His arms (provided by J.Condell and Son) are heavy by today’s standards - stiff, wooden affairs - and the fingers (with the exception of a spring-loaded thumb) are not fully articulated. Despite this lack of prosthetic dexterity, George Hunlock mastered his new limbs: he could eat, light his pipe and (most incredibly) he developed handwriting that was “clear and distinct.” Contemporary newspaper reports say that he wrote “better with his wooden hand than most men can with their natural hands.”

George's prosthetic arms were found at a house sale many years ago, packed in a wooden box labeled “Dad’s Arms.” They were accompanied by newspaper articles detailing Mr. Hunlock’s bravery. Also in the box was all his correspondence with the limb manufacturers, and a stack of old ledgers (signed “George Hunlock”) from George’s second career as a tobacconist. The account books contain neat, precise handwriting that span several years. The dealer who bought the arms was told by a family member that the writing (incredibly enough) is George’s very own.

Help Artist Mark Fairnington Reveal the Horniman Museum’s Hidden World!

Our friend Jo Hatton--Natural History keeper at London's excellent Horniman Musuem--has just alerted me to a wonderful looking project they are attempting to fund via Kickstarter. Your support will also win you a number of lovely rewards including art prints and photo books. Following is a description of the project; for more information, visit the Horniman's Art Fund page, Twitter feed, or website. Please consider supporting this unique and worthwhile project!

We want to stage an exhibition of Mark Fairnington's paintings alongside their inspiration, our collection's hidden taxidermy treasures.

We need your help to fund Mark Fairnington’s autumn exhibition at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, where we will display his paintings alongside the specimens that inspired them. The objects will be presented as they are in storage, evoking the wonder Mark experienced when he found them for the first time. 

Mark Fairnington is a British painter whose work explores the lineage of animal and plant painting, and its relation to how humans understand the natural world. He has been exploring the natural history specimens at the Horniman over the past five years; looking into hidden spaces in our collection and painting the objects he has found. Like many museums, most of our collection is not on public display – thousands of objects are kept boxed and wrapped in storage. These storage depots are full of peculiar, breathtaking and surreal images: taxidermy specimens wrapped in transparent plastic sheets, skeletons perched in wooden boxes, a small pet dog lying in a nest of tissue paper. 

Please help us raise the money so that we can show you more of Mark’s stunning work and reveal the secrets of the Horniman store. In return for your donation, you will receive one of a number of wonderful rewards. These include limited-edition postcards, prints and bags, as well as a chance to meet Mark behind the scenes.

About the artist 

Mark Fairnington has shown extensively in museums and private galleries in the US and Europe. His practice is founded on painting as a primary method of research, and his pictures – which are drawn from many sources, particularly photography – combine obsessive surface detail with sensuous precision. They examine how painting, as a meticulously constructed surface, can interrogate and re-present an image. The subjects of Fairnington’s paintings are made more singular through being painted. He has worked with the Imperial War Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the Wellcome Collection. Fairnington’s most recent solo exhibition Unnatural History was a retrospective at the Mannheimer Kunstverein and Galerie Peter Zimmermann in Germany. 

Image list

1. Mark Fairnington. Monkey Face. 2012
2. Mark Fairnington. Nest. 2012.
3. Mark Fairnington. The Night Watch. 2007
4. Mark Fairnington. Zebra. 2004 
5. Horniman. e-flyer

The Phantasmagoria: An Ancestry Of Fear : Guest Post and New Film by Film Maker in Residence Ronni Thomas

Below, film maker in residence Ronni Thomas--director of The Midnight Archive--explains his attraction to 18th century phantasmagoria magic lantern shows, as explored in his first "Morbid Anatomy Presents" film, starring Mervyn Heard, author, of Phantasmagoria: The Secret Life of the Magic Lantern. You can view the film above; Stay tuned for more episodes which will premiere monthly on our new You Tube channel, which can be found here! P.S.  Happy Birthday, Mervyn Heard!

I confess... In fact, I am proud to admit... When the lights go out, and my family are all safely tucked away to sleep, I scour the internet endlessly searching, in the dark, for... scary videos (what will the neighbors think?). In fact, ever since I was able to change the channel, I would click through ways to put myself through some sort of emotional torment. From 80s slasher flicks, to stories of demonic possession, to forcing myself to go into my basement with all the lights off to find the boogeyman  -I was obsessed with trying to amuse myself with fear as both the protagonist and antagonist. And apparently I was a member of a historical legacy of fear-seekers...

It may surprise you (though it doesn't surprise me), that our ancestors were as addicted to terrifying themselves as we are here in the "enlightened" age. In this film, Mervyn Heard, a historian of the 'Magic Lantern', tells us about the Phantasmagoria shows of the early 1800s. Our 200 year old ancestors would subject themselves to total darkness, floating skeletons and demons, drugs, electrical stimuli and many more sensory abuses, all for a cheap thrill. Preceding cinema by almost 100 years and serving as some of the earliest form of stage magic, the Phantasmagoria shows set out to not only bewilder audiences, but to terrify them, and in big style. Why do we consistently seek out ways to put ourselves through some sort of existential hell? Perhaps, the thrill of fear, is a necessary part of our emotional evolution... Or, perhaps we just like a good scare! The film is the first of the new Morbid Anatomy Museum Presents film series.

Happy Ash Wedesday, Where the Tradition of Memento Mori Continues Unabated

Happy Ash Wednesday! The following quote, from "The History and Meaning of Ash Wednesday" By Dr. Richard P. Bucher, makes clear the relationship between traditional memento mori and the Ash Wednesday tradition of ashes on the forehead:

In the typical Ash Wednesday observance, Christians are invited to the altar to receive the imposition of ashes, prior to receiving the holy Supper. The Pastor applies ashes in the shape of the cross on the forehead of each, while speaking the words, "For dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). This is of course what God spoke to Adam and Eve after they eaten of the forbidden fruit and fallen into sin. These words indicated to our first parents the bitterest fruit of their sin, namely death. In the context of the Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes, they remind each penitent of their sinfulness and mortality, and, thus, their need to repent and get right with God before it is too late...
--The History and Meaning of Ash Wednesday, By Dr. Richard P. Bucher (sourced here)

Image: Rattenberg (Tyrol). Augustine museum - Memento-mori-painting (1694) from Kitzbühl - detail with inscription: "All skulls are signed but one; write your name on it, it is yours." Sourced here.