New Morbid Anatomy Book on the Uncanny Allure of the Anatomical Venus!

The strangest, without a doubt, is an 18th century wax figure known as the "Anatomical Venus": a comely young woman, life-sized and nude, lying prostrate on a pink silk cushion in what looks to be a state of sensual rapture, her torso flayed and all her glistening organs -- including a womb containing a tiny fetus -- revealed. Her long brown hair is real, her eyes are open and unfocused, and the cloth of her pillow is crumpled -- she might as well be writhing. The product of one sculptor's clearly intimate experience with cadavers, she suggests an Enlightenment-era St. Teresa ravished by communion with the invisible forces of science.
--"Exposing classical art's true colors: A Getty Villa exhibit adds brilliant hues to works once thought to be unadorned." Holly Myers for the Los Angeles Times, 2008

Morbid Anatomy began in 2007 as a research tool for an exhibition called Anatomical Theatre, which explored the uncanny allure of historical wax medical models. Of all those models, by far the most seductive and fascinating is life-sized, ecstatically posed Anatomical Venus.

Since that time, the Anatomical Venus has served as both a guide and a muse for the entire Morbid Anatomy project, inspiring research and trips around the world; exhibitions including Exquisite Bodies at the Wellcome Collection; a variety of lectures and articles; and, as of May 24th, a brand new, hardcover, gorgeously designed and lavishly illustrated (see sample page spreads above) 224 page book entitled The Anatomical Venus, published by Thames and Hudson in the UK (top image) and by DAP (second image) in the USA.

The book uses The Anatomical Venus as a point of departure to explore the many paths that lead from her; it situates her within her "historical and cultural context in order to reveal the shifting attitudes toward death and the body that today render such spectacles strange. It reflects on connections between death and wax, the tradition of life-sized simulacra and preserved beautiful women, the phenomenon of women in glass boxes in fairground displays, and ideas of the ecstatic, the sublime and the uncanny."

The full official ad copy for the book follows; stay tuned for information on parties and symposia to celebrate its release taking place in both New York City and London! And, although the book will not be officially released until mid-May, it can be pre-ordered in the USA here, and here for the rest of the world.

Of all the artifacts from the history of medicine, the Anatomical Venus—with its heady mixture of beauty, eroticism and death—is the most seductive. These life-sized dissectible wax women reclining on moth-eaten velvet cushions—with glass eyes, strings of pearls, and golden tiaras crowning their real human hair—were created in eighteenth-century Florence as the centerpiece of the first truly public science museum. Conceived as a means to teach human anatomy, the Venus also tacitly communicated the relationship between the human body and a divinely created cosmos; between art and science, nature and mankind. Today, she both intrigues and confounds, troubling our neat categorical divides between life and death, body and soul, effigy and pedagogy, entertainment and education, kitsch and art.

The first book of its kind, The Anatomical Venus, by Morbid Anatomy founder and Morbid Anatomy Museum co-founder and director Joanna Ebenstein, features over 250 images—many never before published—gathered by its author from around the world. Its extensively researched text explores the Anatomical Venus within her historical and cultural context in order to reveal the shifting attitudes toward death and the body that today render such spectacles strange. It reflects on connections between death and wax, the tradition of life-sized simulacra and preserved beautiful women, the phenomenon of women in glass boxes in fairground displays, and ideas of the ecstatic, the sublime and the uncanny. 

Mater Dolorosa (Our Lady of Sorrows), Italian School, Probably 16th Century

Painting of the Mater Dolorosa (Our Lady of Sorrows), Italian School, Probably 16th Century. Via Bukowski's Auction House.

From Wikipedia:

The Seven Sorrows of Mary are a popular Roman Catholic devotion. In common religious Catholic imagery, the Blessed Virgin Mary is portrayed in a sorrowful and lacrimating affect, with seven daggers piercing her heart, often bleeding. Devotional prayers that consist of meditation began to elaborate on her Seven Sorrows based on the prophecy of Simeon... [Those seven sorrows are]:

The Prophecy of Saint Simeon. (Luke 2:34–35)
The Escape and Flight into Egypt. (Matthew 2:13)
The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:43–45)
The Meeting of Mary and Jesus on the Via Dolorosa.
The Crucifixion of Jesus on Mount Calvary. (John 19:25)
The Piercing of the Side of Jesus, and His Descent from the Cross. (Matthew 27:57–59)
The Burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea. (John 19:40–42)

Philippe Curtius' Sleeping Beauty: Breathing 1920s Waxwork Cast from original 1767 Mold; From the Morbid Anatomy Book "The Anatomical Venus"

The Sleeping Beauty, a waxwork whose breast rises and falls ever so slightly, as seen in the video above.

The model pictured here is a 1925 replica cast from his original mold after the original 1767 wax model destroyed in a fire and crafted by Philippe Curtius. Curtius was the uncle (or possibly the illegitimate father) of the Anne-Marie Grosholtz, who would rise to fame as a wax modeller in her own right under her married name Madame Tussaud. 

This piece can still be seen, breathing gently, at Madame Tussaud's in London. In her book Phantasmagoria, Scholar Marina Warner says of this piece: "The illusion of permanent sleep is invoked to deny the reality of death... The Sleeping Beauty functions as anti-memento mori....she promises immortality as the suspension of time."

Find out more in the new Morbid Anatomy book The Anatomical Venus, published by DAP in the US and Thames and Hudson in the rest of the world. You can find out more here.

Mysterious 1933 Autopsy Film: Michael Sappol from the National Library of Medicine Collection

Michael Sappol--historian at the National Library of Medicine, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, and curator of Dream Anatomy--just shared news of a mysterious film in his Library's collection. This 1933 film contains, in the Library's own words, "an autopsy, perhaps the first ever performed before a motion picture camera. On screen, a bespectacled man in a white coat happily cuts open an unidentified dead man, chatting all the while with students and colleagues..."

You can watch the film (probably NSFW) above. The full description of the film follows; you can also read a post about it on the Circulating Now blog.

Herr Professor Doktor Jakob Erdheim Search the transcript
1933 / 5:16
Film fragment, no producer, no director, Vienna, Austria
Silent, black-and-white.

Sometime in the last century a fragment of silent film landed at the National Library of Medicine. How it got there is a mystery: no paperwork survives to tell the tale; no other prints of the film appear to have survived; no other sources on its making or showing have turned up. The film itself gives no direct information on its origins or purpose. It has no real title or credits, only a single intertitle that tersely announces the featured player, setting, and time: “Herr Professor Doktor Jakob Erdheim. Prosektor. Krankenhaus Der Stadt Wien. September 1933.”

What comes after that is extraordinary, a minor landmark of medical cinema: an autopsy, perhaps the first ever performed before a motion picture camera. On screen, a bespectacled man in a white coat happily cuts open an unidentified dead man, chatting all the while with students and colleagues...

Italo Calvino on Dr Spitzner’s Life-sized Wax Model of a Caesarean Section, from Morbid Anatomy's "The Anatomical Venus"

The most incredible example of sadist-surrealist fantasy is to be found among the representations of the various phrases of childbirth and gynaecological operations. A complete model of a patient undergoing a Caesarean section lies with her eyes wide open, her face distorted by pain, her hair impeccable, her calves tied together, dressed in a long, lace nightgown, which is open only at the part of her body which has been cut open by a scalpel, where the baby appears. Four male hands are placed on her body (two operating, two holding her waist): fine wax hands with manicured nails, ghostly hands since they are not supported by arms but adorned only with white cuffs and with the ends of the sleeves of a black jacket, as though the whole ceremony was being held by people in evening dress.
-- Italo Calvino on Dr Spitzner’s life-sized wax model of a caesarean section (above), from his essay ‘The Museum of Wax Monsters’, in Collection of Sand (first published in Italy in 1984, translated into English 2013).

Learn more about--and see many more images of!-- this and many other amazing waxes in the upcoming Morbid Anatomy book The Anatomical Venus, more on which here.

The Art and Anatomy of St. Bartholomew: Guest Post by Artist and Anatomist in Residence Emily Evans

Following is a guest post by Artist and Anatomist in Residence Emily Evans about flayed Saint Bartholomew and his curious afterlife in early anatomical illustration. You can find out more about Emily and her work here.

Tradition holds that the apostle Bartholomew was martyred by being flayed alive.

This brutal torture has been depicted in many different ways over the centuries. He is sometimes depicted holding the knife, which symbolizes his martyrdom. The artworks seem to evolve over time from showing him just before the blade strikes, to when flaying occurs and then in later works after the act, where he is draped in, or holding his own skin.

It can be difficult to view these artworks reflecting the act of being skinned alive without squirming thinking of the pain and blood. This is especially so in the early religious paintings of the saint.

Fine artists took the iconic portrayal of St. Bartholomew to use in their work. One of the most famous being Michelangelo who included Bartholomew holding a sheet of his own skin in his left hand and in his right hand is a knife in his famous Last judgment, in the Sistine chapel, The Vatican, Rome. The face on the skin is reputed to be a self-portrait of the artist.

For the anatomists among us, it’s possible to see past the grotesque barbaric act of flaying to reveal the beauty of the musculature beneath.

Medical illustrators took this concept and depicted a flayed anatomical man in a more anatomical context than religious one in the famous 16th century anatomical publications.

In 1543, Andreas Vesalius published De humani corporis fabrica (On the fabric of the human body). This groundbreaking anatomical tome consisted of engravings which many believe were created by Titian's pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar.

In 1560, Juan Valverde de Amusco published Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano of which all but 4 of its 42 engravings were taken almost directly from Vesalius’s Fabrica. The original illustrations are thought to be drawn by Gaspar Becerra who was a contemporary of Michelangelo, and the copperplate engravings executed by Nicolas Beatrizet.

This movement from the religious to the more artistic and anatomical depictions of Bartholomew continued with the sculpture by Marco D’Agrate who was a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci. It begins to become clear how d’Agrate was interested more in the relationship between art and science than in the one between art and religion.

The American writer Mark Twain certainly did not see this beauty when he saw Marco d’Agrate’s statue of St. Bartholomew in Milan where the saint is shown wearing his skin like a stole. He wrote in 1867:

‘The figure was that of a man without a skin; with every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon and tissue of the human frame represented in minute detail. It looked natural, because somehow it looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be likely to look that way unless his attention was occupied with some other matter.

‘It was a hideous thing, and yet there was a fascination about it somehow. I am very sorry I saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes. I shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed’s head and looking down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy cold legs. It is hard to forget repulsive things’

In 2002, Gunther Von Hagen’s Bodyworlds came to London, and I saw ‘The Skin Man’ for the first time. Hagen’s plastination process enabled the first and only depiction of Bartholomew in actual human tissues.

Not long after, I saw Hirst’s ‘Exsquisite Pain’ at Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 2009. This silver edition of the piece stands Bartholomew on a table covered in tools with a scalpel in one hand to reflect dissection traditions and in the other hand he is holding scissors (said to be inspired by Tim Burton’s film ‘Edward Scissorhands’ of 1990).

You can currently see an edition in gold at Great St Bartholomew church, London for the next few years.

Oddly, St. Bartholomew is also the patron saint of tanners!

Images top to bottom:
Fig.1. Saint Bartholomew, Church of San Laureano, Boyacá, Colombia (year not known)
Fig.2. Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, (1355-1360) Prato, Museo di Palazzo
Fig.3. The Apostle St Bartholomew, (1480) Matteo di Giovanni Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest Hungary.
Fig.4. St. Bartholomew displaying his flayed skin in Michelangelo's The Last Judgment. (1536-1541)
Fig.5. Juan Valverde de Amusco's Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano (Rome, 1560)
Fig.6. Statue of St. Bartholomew, with his own skin, by Marco d'Agrate, 1562 (Duomo di Milano)

Fig.7. Statue of St. Bartholomew at the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran by Pierre Le Gros the Younger. (1666-1719)
Fig.8. The Skin Man, Gunther von Hagens, Institute for Plastination, Heidelberg, Germany, (1993)
Fig.9. Damien Hirst, Saint Bartholomew, Exquisite Pain, 2007, Silver

Video Short about our Current Exhibition House of Wax!

Above is a wonderful short video piece on The Morbid Anatomy Museum and our current exhibition House of Wax, which features German anatomical models once on view at a 19th and early 20th century popular museum. The short was made by the folks at the Hofstra University produced For Your Island and includes interviews with our creative director Joanna Ebenstein and several visitors to the exhibition.

You can see House of Wax--which was curated by Ryan Matthew Cohn--any day but Tuesday, 12-6 through May 30; You can find out more about the exhibition here. You can learn even more about the show at a lecture on April 5th by Dr. Peter M. McIsaac, German and Museum Studies at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who wrote the exhibition text; more on that can be found here.

Anatomical Venus Book Release Party and Symposium Saturday June 4: SAVE THE DATE

On Saturday June 4, we hope you’ll join us at The Morbid Anatomy Museum to celebrate the release of The Anatomical Venus, a new Morbid Anatomy book coming out this May (by DAP in the US and Thames and Hudson elsewhere) which explores the strange and fascinating history of seductive female anatomical wax models which peaked in fashion in the 19th century. Packed with over 250 images--many never before published images--from around the world and documented in intricate detail, the book is the result of Morbid Anatomy founder Joanna Ebenstein's ten-year photographic quest.

The book's text explores the Anatomical Venus within her historical and cultural context in order to reveal the shifting attitudes toward death and the body that today render such spectacles strange. It reflects on connections between death and wax, the tradition of life-sized simulacra and preserved beautiful women, the phenomenon of women in glass boxes in fairground displays, and ideas of the ecstatic, the sublime and the uncanny.

To celebrate, we will host a symposium exploring the range of topics covered by The Anatomical Venus including (but certainly not limited to) anatomized women, wax, the ecstatic, agalmatophilia (people who fall in love with non-animate humans), Catholicism and the cult of the saints, the uncanny, and more.

Full lineup and details to come. You can sign up to attend the event on Facebook to be alerted to more information as it is released, or simply watch this space.

Image: Venerina (Little Venus), life-sized dissectible wax model created by the workshop of Clemente Susini at Florence’s La Specola for Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Bologna, Italy, 1782. Photo by Joanna Ebenstein

Remembering Willie Seabrook: Guest Post by Roger Luckhurst, author of "Zombies: A Cultural History"

On Tuesday, March 29th, Roger Luckhurst--professor at Birkbeck University and author of Zombies: A Cultural History--will be giving a talk for us entitled "The Strange Case of William Seabrook: Traveler, Pervert, Occultist, Drunk, and the man who brought the Zombie to America." Below is a guest post by Dr Luckhurst in which you will learn more about this fascinating man; you can find out more about the lecture--and buy tickets!--here. Hope very much to see you there!

Remembering Willie Seabrook
The extraordinary adventurer and travel writer William Seabrook managed to be a Greenwich Village bohemian in the 1910s, a Jazz Age primitivist who danced on the tables of Harlem and Paris clubs in the 1920s, and a wealthy Westchester celebrity by the late 1930s.

In between, Seabrook tramped through Europe as a bum for a year and was an early American volunteer in the Great War, invalided out as an ambulance driver by chlorine gas poisoning at Verdun. He travelled to exotic locales in Africa, Arabia and the Caribbean, and wrote famous books about each. He lived in Paris and on the French Rivera amongst Modernist exiles, next door to Thomas Mann and Aldous Huxley. Man Ray and Gertrude Stein talk about him in their autobiographies. He inspired the French Surrealists, Michel Leiris and Georges Bataille. He knew everyone.

And he has been largely forgotten by everyone since he died in 1945. He’s worth remembering, though, not just for his bizarre life, but for his enduring gift to American popular culture: the zombie.

Seabrook was notorious in his lifetime for his exotic features for the slick magazines, but also for his very public eccentricities. He was, for example, a sado-masochist with a habit for leading his hired ‘secretaries’ around in collar and chains at parties. In his autobiography, No Hiding Place (1942), he psychoanalysed his sexual ‘kinks’, his penchant for ‘putting chains on ladies’, without shame. To play out this fetishism, Seabrook even employed Man Ray to photograph Lee Miller in various masochistic positions. Seabrook’s perversities were examined by his exasperated second wife, the novelist Marjorie Worthington. Her funny memoir was called The Strange World of Willie Seabrook (1966). 

He was a spectacular alcoholic who eventually locked himself away in a mental hospital to break the habit. His book about this experience, Asylum, was a best-seller, and has just been reissued by Dover Press. 

Seabrook was also interested in the occult. In 1942, he published Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today, which detailed his life-long obsession with collecting experiences of occult practice from around the world. This included a brief friendship with the Golden Dawn magus and self-declared Antichrist, Aleister Crowley, during Crowley’s time in Greenwich Village. In 1919, Crowley visited Seabrook for a week of ritual experiment at his farm, in which they decided to communicate solely by various inflections of the magic word ‘Wow’ (events retold in Seabrook’s story, unsurprisingly called ‘Wow’). On hearing of his suicide by overdose in 1945, Crowley wrote poisonously ‘the swine-dog W. B. Seabrook has killed himself at last, after months of agonized slavery to his final wife.’ 

Seabrook’s book on witchcraft was cast in the rhetoric of the sceptical researcher, but intrigued by the extent of belief in the modern Western world. London and its suburbs, he said ‘house more strange cults, secret societies, devil’s altars, professional “Sorcerers” and charlatans than any other metropolitan area on Earth.’ He repeated whispered stories of sympathetic magic and voodoo dolls at dinners in Paris and on the Riviera, and spoke of attending Black Masses in New York and London (‘rather a bore’). 

Seabrook remained fascinated by this sub-culture, which presumably crossed over with his sexual predilections. Weirdly enough, he featured in a photo-story in Life magazine at the start of the Second World War when he hosted a magical ceremony to issue a hex on Adolf Hitler. I suppose it worked. Sort of. 

But Seabrook was cynical about magic in the West exactly in proportion to his conviction that witchcraft still exercised power in ‘primitive’ societies. Indeed, his bohemianism frequently refused the niceties of civilisation and embraced ‘savage’ energies. In New York, he loved the Harlem clubs and was in Paris when a cult built around the black dancer Josephine Baker.  

A longing for release from his white identity explains Seabrook’s escapes into exotic worlds. In 1924, he travelled to the Middle East and wrote Adventures in Arabia, about joining a Bedouin tribe. In 1931, he was commissioned by Paul Morand to travel to the French colonies in West Africa with the explicit aim of joining a ‘cannibal’ cult. It turned out that the French colonial administration was so obsessed with stopping the natives from this enacting this ritual that it was impossible to eat human flesh in Africa.

Seabrook returned to Paris with some recipes and bribed the Paris morgue for a limb from a recent corpse that he then cooked and ate. It’s a lovely inversion: the most primitive act is found not in the ‘savage’ periphery but the ‘civilised’ metropolitan centre

But Seabrook will endure in the corners of cultural memory for his other exotic adventure, to Haiti. In 1929, he published The Magic Island, an account of his journey, to an island then occupied by American forces. He pursued his typical interests: seeking initiation into the native rituals of the vodou religion, and claiming to drink blood sacrifices and feel the authentic power of the vodou gods passing through him. Yet it is in a later chapter that Seabrook encounters another local aspect of witchery.

In the chapter ‘…Dead Men Working in Cane Fields’, Seabrook writes up local stories about zombies. The local Creole word zombi had appeared in some American writings since the 1880s, but Seabrook took the credit for Americanizing this term and popularizing it.

The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life – it is a dead body which is made to walk and move as if it were alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens.

The chapter is at first an accumulation of local accounts, but Seabrook is astounded when his informant tells him that there are zombies at work nearby in the plantations of the Haitian-American Sugar Corporation. Seabrook therefore comes face to face with actual zombies, and with exquisite hesitation, remarks: ‘I did see these “walking dead men”, and I did, in a sense, believe in them and pitied them, indeed, from the bottom of my heart.’ 

Finding three ‘dead’ Haitians at work, he experiences a moment of ‘mental panic’, only to decide that these are ‘nothing but poor ordinary demented human beings, idiots, forced to toil in the fields.’ 

The context of slavery provides the framework for the ‘undead’ shuffling slave, declared ‘dead’ by the social contract, and forced to work. In the eighteenth century, the French colony of Saint Domingue, before it became independent Haiti in 1804, had the highest death rates but the largest profits amongst slaves taken from West Africa. 

When Seabrook travelled to Haiti, the American occupiers were in the process of reinstating large-scale plantations and trying to stamp out native superstitions in the name of progress. No wonder the workers were locally called zombis. 

Seabrook’s book was a direct influence on White Zombie, the 1932 film that smuggled the zombie into the major horror cycle that began that year. The focus is on Lugosi’s menacing figure of the witch-doctor rather than the zombies he commands, but it was the beginning of the cinematic career of a category of the undead that has since come to dominate contemporary horror film. The memory of Seabrook is now returning often very sketchily in pre-histories of zombie culture, but his focus on the Haitian zombie is best understood in the matrix of his obsession with witchcraft, the occult and the vital energies of so-called primitive societies around the world.

Image: Voodoo performers captured by Seabrook in The Magic Island, via Literary007

SPECIAL EVENT: Into the Panopticum: Spectacle and Education in Popular Museums of 19th Century Europe with Dr. Peter M. McIsaac, German and Museum Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

 

This April, we are beyond delighted to welcome Dr. Peter M. McIsaac, Associate Professor of German and Museum Studies at The University of Michigan, to Morbid Anatomy. McIssac wrote the introductory essay (read in this PDF) for our current House of Wax exhibition--on view through May 30 and curated by Ryan Matthew Cohn--which showcases rarely seen anatomical and ethnographic waxes from Castan's Berlin-based Panopticum which was open to the public from 1869-1922.

On April 5, McIssac will give an illustrated lecture on the history of panoptica, European museums popular from the 18th through the early 20th century that, like American Dime Museums, fall somewhere between aristocratic cabinets of curiosity and today's ideas of museums. Attendees will also be able to visit our current exhibition House of Wax at the end of the event.

Full details below; tickets can be purchased here. Hope very much to see you there!

Into the Panopticum: Spectacle and Education in Popular Museums of 19th Century Europe with Dr. Peter M. McIsaac, Associate Professor of German and Museum Studies at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Tuesday, April 5
Time: 7 pm
Admission: $8
Location: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424 Third Avenue, 11215 Brooklyn NY
NOTE: *** Admission includes a visit to the Museum--currently displaying rare wax models from Castan's Panopticum in Berlin--after the talk.

Panoptica were popular throughout Europe from the 18th through the early 20th century. Like dime museums such as Barnums American Museum, these largely forgotten spaces fall somewhere between aristocratic cabinets of curiosity and todays ideas of museums. They would display for a popular audience anatomical and pathological waxworks, real human specimens, death masks of celebrities and murderers, ethnographic busts, Anatomical Venuses, waxes showing the effects of syphilis (still a fatal disease at this time) along with assorted curiosities such as elephant tusks, mummies, stuffed alligators, and monkey skeletons. They also presented live acts such as singers, dancers, ventriloquists, hunger artists, and even living freaks and ethnic rarities. Its spectacle hovered between the exotic and scientific pretense.

Tonight, join Dr. Peter M. McIsaac for an illustrated lecture about the rise and fall of the little known phenomenon of the panopticon in cultural context. The Museum--which is currently displaying rare wax models from Castan's Panopticum in Berlin, with explanatory texts written by Dr. Mc Isaac--will also be open after the talk.

Peter M. McIsaac is associate professor of German Studies and Museum Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His publications include Museums of the Mind: German Modernity and the Dynamics of Collecting and Exhibiting the German Past: Museums, Film, and Musealization. He is also currently writing a book-length manuscript on the "secret" German pre-history to Body Worlds, a contemporary exhibition of human corpses that has broken attendance records and generated controversy around the world. In 2005, he received the Richard K. Lublin Distinguished Teaching Award from Trinity College of Duke University. Before coming to Michigan, McIsaac served as the Director of the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University.

Images, top to bottom:

1. Im Panopticum, Albert Heise, 1892: A painting of a panopticum in Berlin, perhaps Castan's
2. Installation shot of the Morbid Anatomy Museum current exhibition House of Wax
3. The wax atelier of E. E. Hammer, Munich, late 19th century. Courtesy of Valentin-Karlstadt-Musäum, München
4. Guidebook to Castan's Panopticum, 19th or early 20th century, sourced here

AutomataCon: A Convention for Automata Enthusiasts: The Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey, March 18-20, 2016

We at Morbid Anatomy are so excited about AutomataCon, an upcoming convention for makers, collectors and enthusiasts of Automata, moving mechanical toys popular in the 18th Century and 19th Centuries. AutomataCon will take place March 18-20, 2016 at The Morris Museum, who house one the finest collections of antique automata in the world.

The full schedule for the event follows; You can find out more--and get tickets--here. See previous posts on the Morris Museum here and here.

AutomataCon

A Convention for Automata Enthusiasts

March 18-20, 2016, Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey

AutomataCon is a convention of and for artists, collectors, historians, and enthusiasts of automatons and related kinetic art. It is a two day event being held March 18th and 19th, 2016 at and in conjunction with the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, home of the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.

The goal of the convention is to gather people from around the world to share ideas, build relationships, and grow interest in automata new and old. The convention will include a variety of private and public programming, such as social gatherings, museum tours, panel discussions, live demonstrations, workshops, presentations, and an exhibition.

The idea for a convention stemmed from the fellowship shown on the Automata / Automaton Group and Mechanical Adventures group on Facebook. Like the Facebook groups, I feel that the true value of the convention will be the relationships built and knowledge shared when passionate people of common interest come together. As such, the success of the convention will depend on the attendees. It will be what we make of it. I am optimistic that great things will come. 

AutomataCon is a convention of and for artists, collectors, historians, and enthusiasts of automatons and related kinetic art. It is a two day event being held March 18th and 19th, 2016 at and in conjunction with the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, home of the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.

The goal of the convention is to gather people from around the world to share ideas, build relationships, and grow interest in automata new and old. The convention will include a variety of private and public programming, such as social gatherings, museum tours, panel discussions, live demonstrations, workshops, presentations, and an exhibition.

The idea for a convention stemmed from the fellowship shown on the Automata / Automaton Group and Mechanical Adventures group on Facebook. Like the Facebook groups, I feel that the true value of the convention will be the relationships built and knowledge shared when passionate people of common interest come together. As such, the success of the convention will depend on the attendees. It will be what we make of it. I am optimistic that great things will come.  

SCHEDULE

Friday Night Reception

March 18, 6-9 PM

Join us for a private reception at the Morris Museum consisting of light refreshments and hors d'oeuvres, with private and behind-the-scenes tours of the Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.

Saturday Programming

March 19, 11 am - 5 PM

Saturday programming will include a variety of panels and programming, covering topics such as

• The History of Automatons
• Techniques for Making Automatons
• Automaton Collecting
• Demonstrations and Meet-the-Artists
• Hands-On Workshops
• Table displays and sales (more info soon)
• Special programming in the Bickford Theater

More details will be posted as panelists are finalized. Please volunteer to participate when you register, as AutomataCon's success depends on its attendees!

Premier showing of historic film, "Le Monde des Automates"

Saturday, March 19, Time TBD

We are pleased to announce that AutomataCon will host the premier showing of the extremely rare 1928 film, “Le Monde des Automates [the World of Automata],” in the museum’s Bickford Theatre, courtesy of Jere and Steve Ryder of AutaMusique, Ltd. This silent film was meant to accompany Alfred Chapuis’ & Eduard Gélis’ foundational 2 volume book by same name, and which has been effectively ‘lost’ from public view for 70+ years. Originally created as a typical period silent film using hand-driven cameras, an accompanying sound track was added shortly thereafter, making this one of the first Swiss-made sound films. About 25-30 minutes in length, it documents some extremely rare and unique automata and mechanical music, at a very early time. A fabulous historical document.

Sunday Programming

March 20, 11 am - 2 PM

Sunday programming will include additional, less formal panels and programming. Demonstrations of the Guinness Collection are also given at 2 PM.

Image: Suicide of Cleopatra automaton from The Morris Museum, about 1880-1890

Job Openings on Governor's Island: Director of External Relations and Vice President, OpenHouseGI

One of all time favorite cultural spaces in New York City--Governor's Island--is looking to hire for two positions: Director of External Relations (on which more here) and Vice President, OpenHouseGI (more here).

Overview on each of these roles follows; You can find out more about them by clicking here here.

Director of External Relations. Two key words drive so much of what we do on the Island: "welcoming" and "visible" and the Director will own all strategies and programs to insure that we are both welcoming and visible. This includes but is not limited to media relations, social media and the website. The Director will own work on the Island and in communities to insure that all New Yorkers, and increasingly tourists too, know about the island and feel welcome here. With the opening of the HIlls this summer, there will be a big push to make the Island more visible than ever.

Second, and equally important, we have a new position VP of OpenHouseGi. Governors Island has become New York City's "shared space for art and play" in large part due to this program, where we provide free space to any organization that creates a free public experience. The public enjoys exhibits, festivals and performances created by dozens of organizations each season.  Now we want to raise the program up a level, fostering more collaboration, new ideas, and big ideas, without compromising our commitment to openness and our formula of no curation, no selection and no funding.  The Island is recognized as a national model but we want to continue to learn and improve and grow.

Art & Anatomy Workshop with Eleanor Crook and Dr Sarah Simblet at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, July and September 2016

Our good friend Eleanor Crook and Dr Sarah Simblet--author of Anatomy for the Artist--will be teaching an Art and Anatomy course at Ruskin School of Art at Oxford University. 

The classes take place July and September of this year. Full details follow. You can also find out more here!

The Ruskin School of Art offers a unique opportunity to those with wish to study and explore human anatomy with highly regarded artists and anatomists. The Ruskin remains the last art school in Europe to incorporate such an in depth study of anatomy within its teaching.

Art and Anatomy 2016 - Two Courses

Dr Sarah Simblet and Eleanor Crook will together teach and guide students on 2 seven day courses in the summer of 2016. Both courses will offer the same programme.

Art and Anatomy Course One: Monday 18th - Sunday 24th July 2016

Art and Anatomy Course Two: Monday 12th September - Sunday 18th September 2016

The programme has been developed around Sarah’s best selling book, Anatomy for the Artist, Dorling Kindersley. The course covers aspects of human anatomy, its drawing and history, and continues to be highly regarded and very successful.

This will be the fifth year of the Art and Anatomy course and a wide variety of artists have benefited from its unique programme - sixth formers, medical artists and students, professional and amateur artists of traditional and contemporary practice. You will take part in intensive workshops, lectures and group discussions on human anatomy, with time for personal studio work.

Consistently interesting and beneficial and I very much enjoyed the presentations.' Art and Anatomy participant, 2014.

‘This is without a doubt the most informative, exciting and challenging short course I have taken for art. The tutors are friendly and diligent making this an unmissable experience for budding artists’ Art and Anatomy participant, 2013

Participants need to bring their preferred drawing materials and the Ruskin will provide easels, paper, a mounted skull and torso armature, wire and wax for modelling, and life models.

No academic or artistic criteria is required for attendance on this course. Participants can expect to leave with a portfolio of new work, a much wider understanding of the subject explored and a wealth of ideas for future artistic development.

Programme

Day 1 : Structural Drawing

Day 2 : The Skeleton

Day 3 : Musculature

Day 4 : Wax Modelling Head and Neck

Day 5 : Wax Modelling Ecorché (muscle figure)

Day 6 : Personal studio time with tutor

Day 7 : Life Drawing

Charges

Ruskin courses are only available to adults over the age of 16 years.

There are three payment rates available:

• Adult - £980.00
• Oxford University students, staff and alumni (10% discount) - £882.00
• Students (with a current NUS card) and OAPs (5% discount) - £931.00

If you select a discounted booking rate, you will need to present your University alumni/staff card, NUS card, or some form of identification indicating your OAP status at the start of the course.

To book a place on any of the Ruskin short courses, please visit the University's online store via this link: https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk

Head and Neck (Portraiture) Anatomy : Monday 1st - Friday 5th August 2016

For the third year, Eleanor and Sarah will offer a five day course on the head and neck in the summer of 2016. This programme was developed in response to the overwhelming success of the Art and Anatomy course and is a dynamic programme that explores human anatomy in greater depth.

'Studying the anatomy of the head has helped me with my drawing and most importantly my perception of the structure for sculpture' Participant on the Head and Neck course, 2014

An intensive, practical Fine Art course on the anatomy, physiology and expression of the human head, offering specialist lectures in anatomy, forensic facial reconstruction and the art history of portraiture. Studio sessions included drawing the head from life, sculpting facial musculature over a cast skull using wax, visits to museums to look at expressive heads in diverse cultures, and also the making of rapid improvised sculptures using found materials to explore the very essence of human expression and communication through the medium of portraiture.

Programme

Day 1 : Anatomy of the human skull

Day 2 : Muscles of facial expression and wax sculpting over a life size cast

Day 3 : Portrait head sculpting in clayDay 4 : Site visit and studio work

Day 5 : Skull decorating to create a powerful head object

Charges

Ruskin courses are only available to adults over the age of 16 years.

There are three payment rates available:

• Adult - £750.00
• Oxford University students, staff and alumni (10% discount) - £675.00
• Students (with a current NUS card) and OAPs (5% discount) - £712.50

If you select a discounted booking rate, you will need to present your University alumni/staff card, NUS card, or some form of identification indicating your OAP status at the start of the course.

To book a place on this course, please visit the University's online store via this link: https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk

Sculpting the Body : Anatomy, Life Modelling and Écorché : Monday 26th September - Friday 30th September 2016

Sarah and Eleanor will teach you to sculpt the human figure confidently with an understanding of anatomy, designing statue poses, preparing armatures and modelling in clay and wax, culminating in a personal and sophisticated final piece. Eleanor and Sarah will share their expertise in anatomy, materials handling, history of sculpture and figure modelling for an entertaining and intensive 5-day session. You will be able to choose whether to finish your work as a sculpted figure or as an “écorché” (an anatomical muscle figure).

Materials and printed reference will be included.

Programme

Day 1 : Introduction to the skeleton and anatomy of the écorché

Day 2 : Designing a pose and preparing 2 armatures

Day 3 : Clay modelling on an armature and wax modelling on a miniature armature with a life model

Day 4 : Site vist and life modelling

Day 5 : Advance figure modelling with life model

Charges

Ruskin courses are only available to adults over the age of 16 years. 

There are three payment rates available:

• Adult - £750.00
• Oxford University students, staff and alumni (10% discount) - £675.00
• Students (with a current NUS card) and OAPs (5% discount) - £712.50

If you select a discounted booking rate, you will need to present your University alumni/staff card, NUS card, or some form of identification indicating your OAP status at the start of the course.

To book a place on this course, please visit the University's online store via this link: https://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk

Human Anatomy Teaching Staff

Dr Sarah Simblet

Sarah Simblet is an artist who writes and draws. She is also a broadcaster, lecturer and anatomist with broad research interests in the relationship between art, science and history. She has published three major art reference books with Dorling Kindersley: ‘Anatomy for the Artist’, ‘The Drawing Book’ and ‘Botany for the Artist’ and exhibits her drawings through her books. Sarah contributes to contemporary art shows, festivals and live events and her work is held in national and private collections. She contributes regularly to British, American and international television and radio programmes about science and art, and consults on national exhibitions. She is Tutor in Anatomy at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, a freelance lecturer at the National Gallery London, and Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and is an academic member of Wolfson College, Oxford. 

Eleanor Crook

Eleanor Crook is one of the world’s leading anatomical modellers in wax: a contemporary artist who uses traditional and newly invented techniques to express and explain the drama of the human body. Eleanor trained in sculpture at Central St Martins and the Royal Academy and makes figures and effigies in wax, carved wood and lifelike media, with exhibitions nationally and internationally. She has sculpted anatomical and pathological waxworks for the Gordon Museum of Pathology at Guy's Hospital, London's Science Museum, and the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and is a lecturer at the Royal College of Art and the Central St Martin School of Art in London.

Post-Mortem Portraits of the Dukes of Württemberg: Guest Post by Eric Huang, Morbid Anatomy Foreign Corespondent

In the following guest post, Morbid Anatomy foreign corespondent Eric Huang reports on the post-mortem portraits of the Dukes of Württemberg, which can be seen in the crypt of Altes Schlos (or "Old Castle), a Renaissance era castle turned museum in Stuttgart, Germany. All photos are his own.

Death Portraits of the Dukes of Württemberg
The Landesmuseum in Stuttgart is a history museum about Württemberg, formerly a kingdom and today a part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The collection is formed in large part by the 16th-century wunderkammer of the royal family. Paintings, decorative art, sacred art, as well as an impressive collection of clocks and glassware, fill the Altes Schloss, a Renaissance era castle and former royal residence that now houses the museum.

The only part of the building that retains its Renaissance character is the crypt. Several members of the royal family of Württemberg are buried in the inner chamber beneath grand marble monuments. The entryway to the burial chamber is an art gallery of late 17th and early 18th century death portraits. Dukes and Duchesses of the land are painted as if asleep with putti and loved ones in mournful attendance.

Herzogin Magdelena Sybilla Württemberg’s portrait (4th image down) is unique in that she is depicted sitting up rather than in a state of repose. She has been dressed in high mourning and posed in a chair, her head propped up by a left elbow that leans casually on a casket. A grave marker flanked by skeletons stands in the background to the right. The background appears to be a depiction of the burial chamber in the next room, although the room looks a different today with more recent 19th century monuments in place of the 17th century caskets.

It takes about three hours to properly tour the museum and all its collections. The crypt is a little difficult to find, though. Use the lifts in the lobby to reach the first floor Mezzanine level. Then follow the arrows to exit out of the castle, walk along a veranda, and down the stairwell to the crypt. Ask a staff member if you can’t find it, as the crypt is an unmissable feature of the museum.

Second Annual Morbid Anatomy Museum Gala With Honorary Chair Parker Posey and Afterparty With DJ Set by Electronic Music Pioneer Vince Clarke!

We are thrilled to announce our second annual Morbid Anatomy Museum Gala taking place April 12th at the venue of our generous sponsor The Bell House. We hope you will join us and actress Parker Posey for an exciting evening of dinner, cocktails generously supplied by our sponsor Hendrick's Gin, performances and special guests; an auction of one-of-a-kind art, objects, and experiences; and much more, all in support of The Morbid Anatomy Museum!

In addition to all this, VIP ticket holders will enjoy a champagne toast at Morbid Anatomy Museum—just a moment's walk from the Bell House—with honorary chair Parker Posey along with a private tour of our current exhibition with its curator Ryan Matthew Cohn of TV's Oddities. All guests will enjoy a fine catered meal, drinks, auction and performances, and are invited to stay for an afterparty featuring complimentary beer by sponsor Sixpoint Brewery and the DJ stylings of electronic music pioneer Vince Clarke.

Tickets are also available separately for those who wish to attend only the afterparty—an exciting night of music and drinks courtesy of Vince Clarke and sponsor Sixpoint Brewery!

We hope to see you there!

Second Annual Morbid Anatomy Museum Gala with Honorary Chair Parker Posey

Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 7 PM (6:30 for VIP)

$250 (Regular Ticket), $500 (VIP Ticket with champagne toast at The Museum); $2500 (Table for 5, includes VIP champagne toast); $5000 (Table for 10, includes VIP champagne toast) Tickets and more info here.

Gala Afterparty with DJ Set by Electronic Music Pioneer Vince Clarke and Complimentary Beer Courtesy of Sixpoint Brewery

Tuesday, April 12, 2016, 9 pm till late, $50. Tickets and more info here.

Image: Dance of Death, Bernt Notke 1463-66

Happy Valentine's Day from All of Us at Morbid Anatomy!

Happy Valentine's Day from all of us at Morbid Anatomy!

Top image: Sacred Heart of Jesus with Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Louis Gonzaga, José de Páez, Mexico, 1727-179

Bottom image: Husband and Wife Nobles, from Cycle of Scenes of Living Skeletons, Paolo Vincenzo Bonomini, (1757 – 1839)

Sign Petition to Save the the Wonderful Musée Depuytren of Paris!

We have just learned that one our favorite medical museums--The Musée Depuytren of Paris--is in danger of closing.

There is a petition being circulated to protest this closure; we have signed, and hope you will, too! You can do so by clicking here.

Morbid Anatomy 2nd Annual Gala! Insect Petting Zoo! The Cult of Fashion! Demystifying Shamanism! Camera Obscura Workshop! Life After Near Death!

We have many wonderful upcoming events at the Morbid Anatomy Museum!

First, please save the date for the second annual Morbid Anatomy Museum Gala and Afterparty. We hope you can join us for a special evening of dinner, drinks, performances & special guests, an auction of one-of-a-kind art, objects, and experiences, and much more this April 12th at the Bell House.

We'll venture through the underbelly of 19th century Paris and learn about its labor conditions, prostitution, drinking, crime, and popular entertainment with author Luc Sante (Wednesday, February 10th, 7 pm); host a family-friendly insect and reptile petting zoo with NYU biology student, Aaron Rodriguez (Monday, February 29th, 7pm); look at the integral role of the dream in alchemical and creative practice with alchemist Brian Cotnoir (Monday, April 4th, 7 pm); Andi Harriman offers a history of goth subculture from its DIY beginnings in the late 70s to its demise at the turn of the 90s (Wednesday, April 27th, 7 pm); and we'll teach the 17th century of vanitas and camera obscura making with Amy-Claire Huestis (Saturday March 5th,12 pm to 5 pm).

We'll explore the costuming of shamans and tribal leaders, kings and queens, and warriors and witches (Thursday, March 17th, 7 pm); Morbid Anatomy favorite Dr. Stanley Krippner returns with a look at historical and contemporary shamanic practices, herbal knowledge, and sacred rituals with complementary Trinity Absinthe by our sponsor Overland Distillery (Thursday, April 14th, 7 pm); we'll discuss what really happens when someone returns from a near death experience (Thursday, April 21st, 7 pm) and examine why humanity has universally rejected the philosopher Diogenes's argument against caring for human remains (Monday, May 2nd, 7 pm).

Please join us this week for a closer look at Thomas Edison's lesser known experiments into communicating with the dead (Tuesday, January 26th, 8 pm);a Stereo Realist viewing party featuring fully-restored stereoscopic viewers, original midcentury slides and period tunes (Wednesday, January 27th, 8 pm); a explorations of icons of mortality in art with a focus on 17th century Dutch vanitas paintings (Thursday, January 28th, 8 pm); and an unmasking of the hooded executioner of art and lore with a fascinating history of the death penalty (Saturday, January 30th, 8 pm).

A few tickets are still available for our upcoming anthropomorphic mouse taxidermy class with Amber Maykut (Saturday, January 30th, 12 pm to 4 pm) and Victorian hair art workshop with master jeweler Karen Bachmann (Sunday, January 31st, 11 am to 6 PM).

For our friends in Spain, we hope to see you at this year's Congress for Curious People sponsored by Hendrick's Gin February 3rd to 7th. Learn more about the programming by clicking through for day 1, day 2, night 2, day 3, day 4, night 4,

and day 5.

Hope to see you there!

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IMMEDIATELY UPCOMING EVENTS

Midcentury Stereopanorama with Eric Drysdale: Look and see the 1950s in 3-D!

Wednesday, January 27th, 8 pm, $20. Tickets and more info here.

Deathly Contemplation: 17th Century Dutch Vanitas Paintings: An Illustrated lecture with Lauren Davis
Thursday, January 28th, 8 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

The Executioner, Unhooded: An Illustrated Lecture with Alison Kinney

Saturday, January 30th, 8 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class with Amber Maykut
Saturday, January 30th, 12 pm to 4 pm, $120. Tickets and more info here.

Victorian Hair Art Workshop with Master Jeweler Karen Bachmann

Sunday, January 31st, 11 am to 6 PM, $150. Tickets and more info here.

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NEWLY ANNOUNCED EVENTS

The Other Paris: The Shadow Side of 19th Century Paris, Lecture and Book Signing with Luc Sante, Author of Low Life

Wednesday, February 10th, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

Insect, Arachnid and Reptile Petting Zoo with NYU Biology Student Aaron Rodriguez

Monday, February 29th, 7pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

Vanitas, Fleeting Time, A Camera Obscura Workshop and Inquiry with Artist Amy-Claire Huestis

Saturday March 5th,12 pm to 5 pm, $85. Tickets and more info here.

The Cult of Fashion, An Illustrated Lecture with Alexis Karl

Thursday, March 17th, 7 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Alchemy and Dream: The Lunar Realm of Alchemy, An Illustrated Lecture with Brian Cotnoir

Monday, April 4th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Save the Date for the Second Annual Morbid Anatomy Museum Gala and Afterparty

Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at The Bell House (149 7th Street, Brooklyn). More info here.

Demystifying Shamanism: An Illustrated Presentation with Dr. Stanley Krippner

Thursday, April 14th, 7 pm, $15. Tickets and more info here.

Life After Near Death, An Illustrated Lecture with Debra Diamond

Thursday, April 21st, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

Goth 101: A History of the Postpunk and Goth Subculture, 1978 - 1992, An Illustrated Lecture with Andi Harriman

Wednesday, April 27th, 7 pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, An Illustrated Lecture with Historian Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California at Berkeley

Monday, May 2nd, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

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CONGRESS FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE 2016 IN MADRID, SPAIN

Morbid Anatomy Day of Anatomy and Anthropology

Wednesday, February 3, 5:00pm, Faculty of Medicine (plaza Ramón y Cajal, Madrid) 16 euros. Tickets and more info here.

Madrid in the Baroque Era: A Theatrical and Spectacular City

Thursday, February 4, Equestrian monument of Felipe IV, Plaza de Oriente, 5:00 p.m. 22 euros. Tickets and more info here.

MADRID Strange Phenomena: A Night of Mentalism

Thursday February 4, Calle Santa Ana 6, 10 p.m. 17 euros. Tickets and more infohere.

The Secrets of the National Museum of Natural Sciences

Friday, February 5, Starting point: corresponding to the "tickets" doors in the museum (Calle Jose Gutierrez Abascal 2) door 7:00 p.m. 20 euros. Tickets and more info here.

Special Visit to the XIX century Homeopathic Hospital of "San Jose" and lectures

Eloy Gonzalo Street, 3. 10:30 a.m. Only for guests.

Carnival Gala: Surrealist Masked Ball in the Palace Duarte
Palace Duarte, street Mancebos 5, Palace Opening: Saturday February 6, 9:30 p.m to 2:00 a.m. Tickets and more info here.

Madrid and the Freemasonry

Egyptian Temple of Debod, 11 a.m. 14 euros. Tickets and more info here.

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ALL UPCOMING EVENTS

Here Lies Fluffy: Hartsdale Pet Cemetery, A Final Resting Place: An Illustrated Lecture with Elizabeth Broman

Thursday, February 4th, 2016, 7 pm (lecture will start at 7:15 sharp), $8. Tickets and more info here.

Death is in Our Hearts: Meditations on Death's at Tractional Force, an Illustrated Lecture with Carl Abrahamsson

Friday, February 5th, 7 pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

Jackalope or Traditional Rabbit Shoulder Mount Taxidermy Class

Saturday, February 6th,12 pm to 6 pm, $250. Tickets and more info here.

The Other Paris: The Shadow Side of 19th Century Paris, Lecture and Book Signing with Luc Sante, author of Low Life

Wednesday, February 10th, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

The Flapper Revolution: An Illustrated Lecture With Mel Gordon, Author of Voluptuous Panic

Thursday, February 11th, 7 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Horizontal Collaboration: The Erotic World of Paris, 1920-1946 with Mel Gordon, author of Voluptuous Panic, Sponsored by Overland Distillery, Proud Makers of Trinity Absinthe

Friday, February 12th, 7 pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

If You Feel It, Peel It: 42nd Street Peepshow Films and Beyond programmed by MM Serra and Josh Lewis

Saturday, February 13th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Anthropomorphic Insect Shadowbox Workshop: Valentine Day's Special with Daisy Tainton, formerly Senior Insect Preparator at the American Museum of Natural History

Sunday, February 14th, 1 to 4 pm, $75. Tickets and more info here.

Beggar's Banquet: The History of Sin Eaters: An Illustrated Lecture with Karen Bachmann
Tuesday, February 16th, 7 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Midcentury Stereopanorama with Eric Drysdale: Look and see the 1950s in 3-D!

Wednesday, February 17th, 8 pm, $20. Tickets and more info here.

Surrealism and Alchemy: More Than Just a Pretty Picture: An Illustrated Lecture with Brian Cotnoir

February 19th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Mole Mount Taxidermy Workshop with Katie Innamorato

Sunday, February 7th, 12 pm to 6 pm, $250. Tickets and more info here.

Mütter Museum Presents: The Skin She Lived In: Anthropodermic Books at College of Physicians of Philadelphia: Illustrated Lecture by Beth Lander, Introduced and Moderated by Daniel K. Smith

Monday, February 22nd, 7 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on 16mm with live music by M.V. Carbon

Wednesday, February 24th, 7 pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

Morbid Academy Presents: Stalking Weird History: A Conversation with Robert Damon Schneck and Mitch Horowitz

Thursday, February 25th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Fancy Rat Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman

Saturday, February 27th, 12 pm - 6 pm, $200. Tickets and more info here.

European Starling Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman

Sunday, February 28th, 12 pm - 7 pm, $275. Tickets and more info here.

Insect, Arachnid and Reptile Petting Zoo with NYU Biology Student Aaron Rodriguez

Monday, February 29th, 7pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

Tarot Reading, Palmistry and Astrology with The Tarot Society

Monday, February 29th, 6 pm to 8 pm. Sliding scale. More info here.

From Grand Guignol to the Classic Horror Movies of the 1930s: Elliot Passantino's History of Horror Film, Part 1

Tuesday, March 1, 2016, 7 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Vanitas, Fleeting Time, A Camera Obscura Workshop and Inquiry with Artist Amy-Claire Huestis

Saturday March 5th,12 pm to 5 pm, $85. Tickets and more info here.

Morbid Anatomy Flea Market at the Bell House

Sunday, March 6th,12 pm to 6 pm (11 am for members). More info here.

The Good Death: An Exploration in Dying in America: An Illustrated Lecture with Ann Neumann

Thursday March 10th, 7pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

Architecture of Initiation: Alchemy and the Theater of Memory: An Illustrated Lecture with Brian Cotnoir

Friday, March 11th, 7pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Morbid Academy Presents: The Real Paranormal: A Conversation with Stacy Horn and Mitch Horowitz

Wednesday, March 16th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

The Cult of Fashion, An Illustrated Lecture with Alexis Karl

Thursday, March 17th, 7 pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Katherine Bauer's "Psycho Pussy Slaughter" and other Fatal, Feline Rites and Rituals: Screening with 16mm film and live music!

Wednesday, March 23rd, 7 pm $10. Tickets and more info here.

Alchemy and Dream: The Lunar Realm of Alchemy, An Illustrated Lecture with Brian Cotnoir

Monday, April 4th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Morbid Academy Presents: Tales from the Crypt: A Conversation with Ptolemy Tompkins and Mitch Horowitz

Wednesday, April 6th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World: An Illustrated Lecture with David Jaher

Monday, April 11th, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

Save the Date for the Second Annual Morbid Anatomy Museum Gala and Afterparty

Tuesday, April 12, 2016 at The Bell House (149 7th Street, Brooklyn). More info here.

Atomic Doomsday Battle of the DJs: 78 Records vs. 16mm Film

Wednesday, April 13th, 7 pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.

Demystifying Shamanism: An Illustrated Presentation with Dr. Stanley Krippner

Thursday, April 14th, 7 pm, $15. Tickets and more info here.

Bringing Back the Cabinet of Curiosities, Including a Brief and Wondrous History of the Wunderkammer: An Illustrated Lecture with Susan Harlan

Tuesday, April 19th, 7pm, $8. Tickets and more info here.

Life After Near Death, An Illustrated Lecture with Debra Diamond

Thursday, April 21st, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

Goth 101: A History of the Postpunk and Goth Subculture, 1978 - 1992, An Illustrated Lecture with Andi Harriman

Wednesday, April 27th, 7 pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

Murnau's Faust (1926) on 16mm Film With Live Music by Bradford Reed and Geoff Gersh

Friday, April 29th, 7 pm, $12. Tickets and more info here.

The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains, An Illustrated Lecture with Historian Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California at Berkeley

Monday, May 2nd, 7 pm, $5. Tickets and more info here.

Morbid Academy Presents: Things that go Bump, a conversation with Shannon Taggart and Mitch Horowitz

Wednesday, May 18th, 7pm, $10. Tickets and more info here.