Museums of London Tour, October 5-14, with Jim Edmonson of the Dittrick Museum

Friend of Morbid Anatomy Jim Edmonson of Cleveland's Dittrick Medical Museum has just informed us that he will be leading a guided tour of London Museums this October 5th to 14th; stops along the way include such wonderful museums as The Wellcome Collection (who is celebrating its 5th birthday today! Happy birthday!), The Hunterian, and the Old Operating Theatre.

Blurb follows; full details can be found here:

Museums of London Tour
Art, History and Medicine, October 5-14, 2012 

We invite you to join Catherine Scallen, Chair of the Art History department and Jim Edmonson, Curator of the Dittrick Museum on the campus of Case Western Reserve University, for this custom designed tour of the key museums of London, England. Jim's contact with fellow curators and museum directors opens doors and provides the group with unique insights into their collections and aspects not normally open to the general public. Catherine's experience teaching and researching the masters of European Art from 1400 to 1900 will provide historical depth that makes the art museums' collections come alive.  

Please note that our deadline for reserving a place on the London tour is June 30,
so contact us today to secure your reservation.

Please note: the final sign up day has been extended to June 30 from June 15th. If interested, you can find out more here.

Photo: The Hunterian Museum, London, from the museum's website.

"Freaks and Monsters and Fairies, Devils, and Fantasy Tour of Florence," Fall, 2011, Dr. Kathryn Hoffman

Friend of Morbid Anatomy Kathryn Hoffmann of the University of Hawaii, Manoa has just announced that she will be leading a "Freaks, Monsters, and Fairies, Devils, and Fantasy" tour of Florence, Italy this upcoming fall semester. The tour will take in, in Hoffman's own words, "wax anatomical models of course, as well as the devils of Florence, reliquaries, the history of court and fairground stars with corporeal anomalies, and the original dark version of Pinocchio, where he came to a sad end in Book 5. I'm going to teach and take students out of the classroom and into the museums and churches."

Applications are due on April 1; for more information, email professor Hoffman at hoffmann [at] hawaii.edu.

So wish I could make it!

Please click on the image to see a much larger version.

Mexican Mummies Embarking on U.S. Tour!

The famous mummies of Museo de las Momias in Guanajuato, Mexico (see above) are embarking upon a U.S. tour! Their first stop--just announced today--will be the Detroit Science Center in Detroit, Michigan; it is unclear what other cities will be included in the tour, though it has been remarked that there will be 6 other U.S .destinations. Let's hope New York City (or somewhere in the outlying area) makes the cut!

Here is the full story, found in today's Detroit News:

Mexican mummies visit Detroit in October
Kim Kozlowski / The Detroit News

Detroit -- A rare glimpse into the mystery of death will be on display at the Detroit Science Center in October with the first U.S. exhibit of 36 mummies from a World Heritage site in Mexico, museum officials plan to announce today.
The 100-year-old mummies will be on loan from the Museo de las Momias in Guanajuato, Mexico.

"This is the largest and most significant collection of mummies in the Western hemisphere," said Kelly Fulford, spokeswoman for the Detroit Science Center. "It's a phenomenal opportunity to view something really rare and unique ... something you wouldn't be able to see unless you travelled to Mexico."

The Mexican museum opened in the late 1800s after mummified corpses of men, women and children were exhumed from the colonial city's cemetery because their families could no longer pay the crypt fee. Some of the corpses were discovered to have "accidentally" or naturally mummified, meaning nature, not man, stopped their decomposition.

Today 111 natural mummies have attracted visitors to the museum in the city, northwest of Mexico City, since the early 1900s.

Mummy scholars who have been conducting research in Detroit say the exhibit will offer a repository of anthropological, medical and cultural information.
"When you come to this exhibit, you will get to know these people," sad Ronald Beckett, a Phoenix-based Fulbright scholar who studies mummies around the world. "The exhibit will tell the individual human stories of these long-dead people, and give them their identity back."

Museum visitors, for instance, will learn about the health of the mummies in the forensic room of the five-room display. This will be done with the help of modern medical technologies such as computer tomography, endoscopy and DNA analysis.

"The study of old pathologies puts a light on health issues today," said Vivian Henoch, medical exhibit developer. "Anything we glean from the mummies informs what we do and how we advance our understanding of many health issues."

The traveling mummy exhibit will leave Detroit in 2010 and go on to six other U.S. destinations before retuning to Mexico in 2012.

You can see the original article by clicking here. For more about the mummies, you can visit the Museo de las Momias website by clicking here; you can also visit website that has been created for the traveling exhibition--entitled "Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato--by clicking here. Note: I highly recommend you take some time to peruse the photo galleries on these sites.

Image Source: The Detroit News

Vesalius Trust Art and Anatomy Tour, Italy; October 27 to November 8th 2009

Marie Dauenheimer, who will be giving a presentation on Italian Wax Anatomical Models at Observatory next Friday, is also leading a fantastic sounding tour of anatomical museums in Italy for the Vesalius Trust this autumn.

The tour, which will run from October 27 to November 8th, will feature private, guided visits to anatomical museums and anatomical theatres throughout Italy. Sites to be visited include “La Specola” (see above images) and the Museo di Anatomia Patologica in Florence, the anatomical wax museum "Museo delle Cere Anatomiche" and the Teatro Anatomico (Anatomical Theater) in Bologna, and the Teatro Anatomico housed in Palazzo Bo in Padua. Also included will be a walking tour of Venice focusing on the significance of this city during the life and career of Andreas Vesalius, viewings of art and architecture masterworks and guided historical walking tours in each city visited, and, throughout, the company of like-minded art-anatomophiles.

If you have been wanting to visit some of these museums but have not yet had a chance, I can think of no better way than this tour, led by experienced (she has given similar tours in Paris, The Netherlands, and Great Britain), enthusiastic, and incredibly knowledgeable Marie, and in the company of like-minded individuals. If I could afford it (and I'm still trying to figure out how and if I might be able to do so...), I'd be there in a second!

You can find out more about the trip itinerary and registration information by clicking here. For more on Marie's upcoming lecture at Observatory, which will discuss the "La Specola" wax anatomical models at length, click here. For more on the Vesalius Trust, click here.

All Images: Anatomical Waxes at “La Specola” (Museo di Storia Naturale) : Florence, Italy; From Anatomical Theatre.