Henrick's Congress for Curious People in Madrid, Co-presented by The Morbid Anatomy Museum and Atlas Obscura

Morbid Anatomy is delighted to announce a new, Madrid-based Congress for Curious People, sponsored by Hendrick's Gin and co-presented by The Morbid Anatomy Museum and Atlas Obscura!

Full info follows; All events will have English translation or information provided in English.Hope to see some or our Spain-based readers at one or more of these terrific events!

Henrick's Congress for Curious People in Madrid, Co-presented by The Morbid Anatomy Museum and Atlas Obscura
Dates: Wednesday, February 3 - Sunday, February 7
Times: Variable
Admission: Variable

Hendrick's Gin is pleased to present the "Congress for Curious People" in Madrid, a cultural week from February 3-7 dedicated to discovering the most unusual places in the capital of Spain. This Congress will be directed by Pablo Raijenstein (mentalist and Hendrick's Gin ambassador in Spain) and Felipe Trigo (an Spanish events producer, historian and cultural guide) in collaboration with The Morbid Anatomy Museum and Atlas Obscura.

The Congress will feature special activities and events; walking tours devoted to Madrid during the baroque era and the Masonic influence in Madrid; exclusive visits to museums of natural sciences, medicine and anatomy; and talks by Morbid Anatomy creative director Joanna Ebenstein and Atlas Obscura's co-dirctor Dylan Thuras. This new edition of "Congress" promises to be spectacular with a night of mentalism by Pablo Raijenstein and a carnival gala at the palace Duarte, the "Surrealist Ball", with Lady Bon Bon, the main performer in Kriminal Kabarett.

Following is full is of events with links to find out more.

Morbid Anatomy Day of Anatomy and Anthropology
Wednesday, February 3
https://www.facebook.com/events/1654831934775859/

"MORBID ANATOMY DAY" special visit to the museums of Anatomy and Anthropology of the "Universidad Complutense de Madrid".
Wednesday, February 3, 5:00pm, Faculty of Medicine (plaza Ramón y Cajal, Madrid)

With the collaboration of Joanna Ebenstein, creative director in the Morbid Anatomy Museum from New York. The day will include a combined tour and visit to two museums with priceless jewels.First, we will visit the Museum of Anatomy "Javier Puerta" where we will meet the director, Fermin Viejo. This collection is very important for its spectacular series of wax figures from the 18th century, commissioned by the Royal College of Surgery ("Real Colegio de Cirugía de San Carlos"). Later, we will continue the day at the Museum of Medical Anthropology, Forensics, and Forensic Paleopathology "Reverte Coma", located in the same Faculty of Medicine. Guided by a specialist, we will discover the secrets of a true cabinet of curiosities created in the twentieth century. Among countless examples, we will see an impressive collection of Egyptian mummies, vestiges of evolutionary anthropology and ritual body modification.

Important notice: it is strictly forbidden to take pictures in both museums.

Madrid in the Baroque Era: A Theatrical and Spectacular city
Thursday, February 4
https://www.facebook.com/events/1525048727794782/

Starting and schedule: Equestrian monument of Felipe IV, Plaza de Oriente. 5:00 p.m.

In this itinerary between the Plaza de Oriente and Calle Toledo we relive an era, the Baroque, in which theatricality and spectacle were omnipresent in all facets of daily life, as a sign of artistic, royal and ecclesiastical patronage. Patronage was also mass propaganda. Discover those passages in the history of Old Madrid and the first Bourbons in which the illusory, wonder and extravagance were present in the capital, where the streets and squares were used as true scenarios.The tour begins with a special visit to the Royal Monastery "de la Encarnación" to contemplate the fabulous collection of relics, one of the most comprehensive in the world, and also the treasure with the blood of San Pantaleon. The route continues through the old town, where we will focus on other subjects like alchemy and cabinets of curiosities, the symbolism of the Puerta del Sol, theatrical performances, Inquisition trials and Carnival splendor in the era of the Habsburgs. We end our tour with a visit to the Institute of San Isidro (former Imperial College) where we discuss the relationship between the Jesuits and the Baroque culture of spectacle.
 

Strange Phenomena: A Night of Mentalism
Thursday, February 4
https://www.facebook.com/events/1512179665751602/
Starting point and time: Calle Santa Ana 6. 10 p.m.

We are pleased to announce "Madrid Strange Phenomena", the first show of mentalism that takes place in a space where strange events have occurred.

With the help of those attending this evening, the mentalist Paul Raijenstein will evoke one of the most shocking events in the history of Madrid: the tragical fire that destroyed the "Novedades" theater in 1929.

This experience, with a capacity of 30 people per session, takes place in the antiques shop "Santa y Señora", the old emergency exit in the former theater. Attendees will discover that they are also a key instrument to clarify the strange events that occur in this unusual space. The show mixes collective hypnosis and mentalism recreating a seance that will leave the audience speechless

This experience was released in January 2015 and has enjoyed unprecedented success for the unique characteristics of the proposal.

The Secrets of the National Museum of Natural Sciences
Friday, February 5
https://www.facebook.com/events/525895254240681/
Starting point: corresponding to the "tickets" doors in the museum (Calle Jose Gutierrez Abascal 2) door 7:00 p.m.

For the first time, we present a unique and exclusive visit to the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, where a specialized guide will reveal the best kept secrets inside an institution that holds millions of pieces invisible to the general public. We will have a different view of the museum, highlighting the art of taxidermy, the incredible journeys of naturalists and the surprising story of the most emblematic museum specimens. This is the oldest natural sciences museum in our country, with its origin in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History founded in the eighteenth century. Under this cabinet we can admire a restricted public basement where a prodigious collection of species of mammals and birds is stored. This event will have a similar character to the "Morbid Anatomy Museum" special tour organized in the "American Museum of Natural History" in New York.

Special Visit to the XIX century Homeopathic Hospital of "San Jose" and Lectures
Saturday, February 6
https://www.facebook.com/events/1541395092838627/Starting point and time: Eloy Gonzalo Street, 3. 10:30 a.m. Only for guests. Send an e-mail to: curiouscongressmadrid@gmail.com

In the XIX century Homeopathic Hospital of "San Jose" will take place the lecture of the main speakers at the "Hendrick's Congress for Curious People". Previously, with the help of a guide, we will discover the rooms inside the Homeopathic Hospital of "San Jose" as well as the palace of the Marquis del Salado, both great examples of architecture of the first decade of the Spanish Restoration (between 1874 and 1883). Through the small Museum of Homeopathy we discover the origin and practices of this controversial discipline of medicine with many supporters and detractors from the eighteenth century until today.

Then, in the building of the Hospital we will begin our series of lectures with the following speakers:

Joanna Ebenstein, director of "Morbid Anatomy Museum," a New York institution dedicated to the study of anatomical and funerary art. She will tell us the exciting process of creating the museum and her journeys around the world in search of the sublime and the macabre.

Dylan Thuras, director of "Atlas Obscura," the largest virtual compendium of unusual places and secrets around the globe. We will talk about the incredible career of "Atlas Obscura" and the forthcoming book edited by this institution, to be published in mid-2016.

Hendrick's Gin cocktails will be served.

CARNIVAL GALA: Surrealist Masked Ball in the Palace Duarte
Saturday February 6
https://www.facebook.com/events/1541959866115116/
Starting point and time: Palace Duarte, street Mancebos 5
Palace Opening: Saturday February 6 9:30 p.m.. Closing: 2:00 a.m.

Enjoy with us the most unusual and extravagant Carnival in Madrid inside the Palace Duarte, where the gala of the "Hendrick's Congress for Curious People" will take place.Inspired by the memorable "surrealist balls" organized by Salvador Dali in Paris and New York, our Masquerade show will feature Lady Bon Bon, one of the best artists of cabaret and burlesque in our country famous for her performances in "Kriminal Kabarett" more venues in Europe. The "Surrealist Ball" also includes a brief theatrical tour dramatized to discover the history behind the walls of the Palace Duarte, a mansion built in the XVII century. The evening will be accompanied by an eclectic soundtrack (opera, classical, swing revival, lounge, exotika) and a Dj session (80s, new wave, electro vintage).

Dresscode welcome: Any stylish and transgressive attire inspired by the past will be welcome. For the more adventurous, we suggest constumes inspired in surrealist artists or designers: Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Paul Delvaux, Schiaparelli, Alexander McQueen ... More suggestions: 1920-1930 fashion, cabaret, dandies, feathers, masks, animal kingdom, African tribes, Orient Express, fetish-glam ... Use your imagination and surprise us!

Included with the entry: Hendrick's Gin cocktail in the palace.

Madrid and Freemasonry
Sunday February 7
https://www.facebook.com/events/163737973998341/
Starting and schedule: Egyptian Temple of Debod, 11 a.m.
A surprising and complete itinerary where we will show you the history of Freemasonry and its privileged relationship with Madrid through politics, society, culture and the arts. We will begin our route in the Egyptian temple of Debod to discuss the myths about the origin of Freemasonry and the meaning of its symbols. We will continue our walk through the Plaza of Spain and the Plaza de Oriente and the neighborhoods of the historic center, ending in front of the Congress of Deputies. We will speak about numerous aspects of Freemasonry in Madrid: their first steps in the eighteenth century and its boom in the Napoleonic era, the last persecutions of the Inquisition, its height and splendor from the revolution of 1868, the controversial history of this institution under various regimes of the twentieth century and his return after 1978. An exclusive opportunity to rediscover a key institution in the history of Europe that often changed the course of art, science, architecture and philosophy.

Art in the Age of the Stereo Realist 3D Camera System: Guest Post by Amy Slonaker

Following, Morbid Anatomy Museum Board Member Amy Slonaker shares her experience with a session of "Midcentury Stereopanorama with Eric Drysdale," in which attendees explore a virtual 1950s America via 3D stereoviews. This event is a passion project of Eric Drysdale--writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show--who has collected a vast collection of these slides which illustrate the mundane (a department store floor by floor) to the spectacular (what appear to be strange stag parties), all in startling and oddly magical 3D.

Following is Amy's post; you can experience this for yourself at our next interations of the popular event on January 27 or February 17.

In his 1936 essay Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin writes, “that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.” Clearly he’d never tried a Stereo Realist 3D Camera System. If he had, his whole thesis might be different since there is a huge amount of aura inside one these little antique devices. The 3D image quality is truly amazing. It creates an uncanny, hyper-realism beyond HD television.

Lucky for us, Eric Drysdale (writer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Daily Show) collects vintage Stereo Realist 3D devices and the amazing images that go inside. He will provide each attendee their own 3D Realist device with a specially curated set of slides to enjoy. Eric will be on hand to provide all the historical and technical information to enhance the experience.

This event is always a fun group exploration of retro technology where everyone shares reactions and insights.

The English Disease: The Health Education Film As Nazi Propaganda; Guest Post by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine

One of the many films in the vast collection of the National Library of Medicine is the one above: Die englische Krankheit (The English Disease), a circa 1941Nazi health education film about rickets. Below is a post by Michael Sappol--historian at the National Library of Medicine, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, and curator of Dream Anatomy. It was originally posted on their wonderful Circulating Now blog.

Deformed unfortunates trudge back and forth, in a darkly-lit procession, over a map of Great Britain as the soundtrack sounds anxious notes of alarm. That extravagantly horrific scene introduces the Die englische Krankheit (The English Disease), a 13-minute black-and-white health education film, produced during wartime, under the supervision of Nazi authorities, by Universum Film AG (“UFA”), the largest German film studio of the time. After a censorship board approved it as suitable for adults and children, it premiered in Berlin in April of 1941.

Made under conditions of mass mobilization—at a time when Great Britain and the Third Reich were battling fiercely over the skies of England and Germany and at sea in the Mediterranean—Die englische Krankheit is an odd specimen, an eccentric example of the wayward features that sometimes accrued to instructional and health education films in the Nazi period. With its peculiar, almost grafted-on, opening—strident Nazi propaganda pumped up with gloomy lighting, disturbing music, and a scene of grotesque deformity—for a few moments, but only a few, Die englische Krankheit looks like it will dwell in the tonal register of the UFA and Universal Pictures scary horror films that were so popular in the 1920s and 30s. (Great Britain, the enemy, as the site and spreader of monstrous disfigurement).

But then it settles down to do the work that health films typically do: show the treatment and prevention of disease. In the case of Die englische Krankheit that means shifting from horror to animated scientific diagrams, x-ray images and sunny scenes of children playing outdoors: the “English Disease” was rickets, a disease that could be easily prevented by a regular diet of nutritious food, vitamin D supplements, and plentiful exposure to sun.

Die englische Krankheit can be seen on NLM’s Medical Movies on the Web, along with an essay by film scholar, Anja Laukötter (Max Planck Institute, Berlin). Leonhard Link supplied the German and English subtitles. You can find out more about it here.

Morbid Anatomy Museum Seeking Part Time Retail/Visitor Services Associate

Morbid Anatomy is now seeking a part time Retail/Visitor Services Associate. The job will be approximately 20-30 hours a week at $10 an hour. If you are interested, please send a resume and a brief paragraph describing your interest to cristina [at] morbidanatomymuseum.org with "Retail Associate Application" in subject line. 

Responsibilities:

• Welcoming visitors to the museum
• Ringing up sales and museum admissions
• Tidying the space
• Answering the phone
• Side projects as directed by the office manager
• Sales
• Cleaning
• Answering visitor questions
• Customer service
• Keeping inventory of supplies
• Updating mailing list
• Opening and closing the museum and store
• Working events 
• Shipping and handling of online orders

Qualifications:

• Retail/shopkeeping experience
• Neat and tidy in work space
• Friendly and outgoing
• Interested in the Morbid Anatomy Museum and the topics we cover

The Memento Mori Crypts of Loreta, Prague: Guest Post by Eric Huang, Morbid Anatomy Foreign Corespondent

In the following guest post, Morbid Anatomy foreign corespondent Eric Huang reports on the memento mori-themed crypt of Prague's Loreto Church. All photos are his own. For more, see this previous post from 2012, or come visit the full catalog in the Morbid Anatomy Library!

A remarkable discovery was made in 2011 when the crypt at the Loreto Church in Prague was opened for the first time in centuries. What they discovered was a burial chamber ornately decorated in black and white memento mori frescos from 1664 created by an unknown artist.

The crypt is not open to the public, but a recreation of the main chamber is on display at the Loreta Praha Museum. The exhibit entryway is flanked by puti and curtained like a sideshow attraction in a red light district. A volunteer told me the curtains are there as a warning to families as the exhibit proved unsuitable for certain families. Indeed, two little girls dragged their mother out of the curtains, screaming whilst running away just as we approached!

The replica is to-scale. The room is dimly lit and quite narrow with low ceilings. Skeletons, hourglasses, and Catholic allegories depicting the passage of time and the resurrection adorn every wall. The few lights in the room serve to highlight the more macabre imagery, rather than replicate how the chamber would’ve historically appeared when lit for a burial or a requiem mass. It’s all very atmospheric – less accurate than theatrical. Gone is a room for somber, Catholic reflection and devotion. In its place is a wonderful sideshow of sorts. No wonder the little girls found the exhibit too scary!

The crypt exhibit alone is worth visiting the Loreta Praha, but you must wander through the complex to see the sacred treasures on display, in particular a mummified foot (see bottom image) encased in a casket that forms the base of a crystal reliquary cross from the early 18th century.

Charles Dellschau (1830 - 1923): American Visionary: By Curator in Residence Stephen Romano

Stephen Romano is the Morbid Anatomy Museum curator in residence; he is also the man behind our recent wonderful “Opus Hypnagogia" exhibit (New York Times here) in which he showcased a number of works by American visionary artist Charles Dellschau (1830 - 1923).

Stephen is now exhibiting a large collection of Dellschau's idiosyncratic watercolor and collage artworks--a few of which can be seen above--at his gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Following is a guest post about the show and the artist by Romano. You can visit the show--entitled Charles A. A. Dellschau (1830 - 1923) American Visionary"-- through February 15, 2016; more on that here.

According to well respected art writer Tom Patterson’s Raw Vision Magazine review of the extensive monograph I produced with Marquand Books and distributed by DAP Artbooks, “Charles Dellschau is widely acknowledged as an Outsider master in the same league as Adolph Wolfli, Henry Darger and Martin Ramirez.” The first exhibition of Dellschau’s works was mounted in a Manhattan Gallery in May of 2000. Since then Dellschau has been included in group exhibitions at the High Museum in Atlanta, The American Folk Art Museum, White Chapel Gallery, London, The Menill Foundation of Houston Texas, The Pinacoteca Agneili of Turin, and The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore among others.

While we know very little about Dellschau’s life, records indicate he immigrated to the USA in 1849 as a political refugee from Prussia, and upon his arrival he drifted from Galveston through Houston, where he spent most of his life, finding work as a butcher and raising a family and losing most of them to illnesses. Dellschau fought in The Civil War, and upon his discharge settled into Houston, and at the age of 68 began what would obsessively occupy him for his remaining years until 1923.  In those year, secluded in the back room of his niece’s house and living off the generosity of his decedents, Dellschau produced close to 5000 watercolor and collage artworks, of which approximately 3500 have survived. These watercolors were hand sewn into 12 massive volumes and sometime in the mid 1960’s were discarded and made their way to the dump, only to be immediately rescued by a picker named Fred Washington. They later found their way into the collection of the Menil Foundation who, in 1969, exhibited Dellschau’s works in a group show at Rice University. The remaining works were collected by a local UFO enthusiast by the name of Pete Navarro, who obsessively studied them for 20 years, making detailed field notes which are in their own right beautiful works of art.  The remaining Dellschaus in Navarro’s collection were eventually either gifted to local museums or sold to private dealers who introduced them to the mainstream art world to wide initial acclaim, including feature length articles in several art magazines as well as the New York Times. 

Dellschau’s earliest sketches from 1898 describe how a letter to the editor in the Houston Press prompted him to begin these memoirs, in which the author claimed that his design of “a perfect Airship,” that would, if ever constructed, successfully navigate "the air in any direction at will of operator... most emphatically end all wars, [and] be the means of disbanding the vast standing armies of the world, for one ship alone, in the cover of night could destroy any army by using culminate of mercury or any high explosive.” For the next 25 years, Dellschau argues via his artworks that the many airships of the Sonora Aero Club were superior in design to that  proposed by the author W.H. Brown. 

The artworks themselves, made between 1898 and 1921, tell the story of a group of men who lived in the Sonora dessert in California between 1854 and 1859 during the gold rush, and met every Friday evening as a drinking club calling themselves “The Sonora Aero Club.” Their mission was to discuss designs of the very first navigable air crafts which were powered by a secret anti gravity substance called “Suppa.” Dellschau was the Aero Club’s appointed draftsman.

But was Dellschau ever really in Sonora? Did the Sonora Aero Club ever actually exist? Despite exhaustive searches of historical records, there is no definitive proof either way.  Dellschau’s art is what the cultural anthropologist and one of the greatest art writers of the 21st century Thomas McEviley refers to as “Charles A.A. Dellschau’s Aporetic Archive.” In the monograph of Dellschau, McEvilley, in his final published essay, writes: 

One of several major questions surrounding the secrets of Dellschau has to do with the historical value of the account given in his various formats—the three volumes of memoirs and the twelve known books of Plates. Attempts have been made to find other records or evidences of the Sonora Aero Club, or Peter Mennis or George Newell or any other character of the many named, but the results have not been satisfying… The idea that Dellschau’s yarn is fiction somehow does not resolve the issue, since fiction has many modes. Is it fiction in the way a work of art is fiction? Or the way an outright lie is fiction? Or the way confusion may produce a kind of fiction? Different opinions have been registered on all this. And after considering them all, one must acknowledge that the evidence simply doesn’t provide a clear answer to this question. It is one of many questions that just have to be lived with as questions— or ignored.

Some will try to escape the dilemma by asserting that a question that does not have an answer is not a real question. Question and answer are a mutually dependent pair, like yes and no or true and false or up and down. In such a pair neither proposition can be meaningful in a universe where the other is not also meaningful. The idea that, lacking an answer, one should live with the question as a question, like an acquaintance whose name one does not know, may seem frustrating, but at least one major artist, James Lee Byars, has hypothesized the idea of Question; his oeuvre is posited on a universe in which Question rules, which he feels will be more open and creative than one in which Answer rules. Question, after all, is wide open; it could be pointing to anything in the universe. But Answer is closed, it appears as one thing and continues to do so.

Can it be that accepting a question as a question is inwardly, hiddenly, a kind of answer? Or is it just a kind of shrug? Dellschau’s twelve massive books of words and pictures may be no more than an old man’s lonely daydreams. They are pretty daydreams, which imply a pretty question mark, pretty and somehow deep, as one question behind the Aeros is the choice between ascent and descent. The breath-like striped spheres floating by may remind one of a line from a poem of e.e. cummings: “In Just-/ spring when the world is mud-/luscious the little/lame balloonman/whistles far and wee.” The little striped spheres float silently onward. What is their destination?”

Charles Dellschau (1830 - 1923): American Visionary continues through Feb 15 2016 at Stephen Romano Gallery in Brooklyn.  www.romanoart.com

Merry Christmas from Krampus and Morbid Anatomy

Merry Christmas from Krampus--St Nicolas' Eastern European, cloven hooved, birch-switch bearing sidekick--and all of us at Morbid Anatomy. The Museum is closed today, but will be open regular hours tomorrow, December 26.

Death in the Churches Malta: Guest Post by Eric Huang, Morbid Anatomy Foreign Corespondent

 

In the following guest post, Morbid Anatomy foreign corespondent Eric Huang reports on the graphic depictions of death in the churches of Malta! All photos are also his own!

Malta is a devoutly Catholic nation: a Mediterranean island between Sicily and North Africa. Saint John’s Co-Cathedral in the capital city, Valletta, is the crown jewel of Catholic Malta. Built in the 16th century by the Knights of Malta, a Catholic military order whose sole mission was to protect the Holy Lands from so-called ‘infidels’, the cathedral is a spectacular assembly of monuments exalting powerful clergymen.

Death’s heads abound - as do graphic representations of human skeletons, used as motifs in borders, frames, and accents. Most striking, however, are the grave markers of the Knights of Malta themselves. All are intricate marble-inlay mosaics with diverse depictions of Death alongside Catholic angels, crucifixes, and prayers. The Oratory also features two Caravaggio paintings: The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist and a memento mori painting of Saint Jerome.

Malta is well worth a visit for the sacred art and body parts of saints scattered across various churches and museums, including the former residence of the Grand Inquisitor. The high baroque décor and Death’s head imagery evoke the horror and beauty of the Catholic church like nowhere else.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 30: Chuy, The Wolf Man: Documentary Screening with Director Eva Aridjis

We are so very excited to be hosting Eva Aridjis--director of Santa Muerte--for a screening of her new documentary film Chuy, The Wolf Man. This film traces the lives of Jesus 'Chuy' Aceves and his family, all of whom suffer from congenital hypertrichosis, or excessive hair on the face and body. It examines, in the words of the director, "their day-to-day lives and their struggle to find love, acceptance and employment."

The film will screen at the Morbid Anatomy Museum this Monday, November 30; you can find out more in this recent article in the BBC, and more about the event here. You can watch the trailer above.

Hope very much to see you there!

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Image found here.