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A Brief Introduction to The Anatomical Venus

An Illustrated lecture by Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Museum Co-Founder and author of The Anatomical Venus

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.











When: Tue., Aug. 2, 2016 at 7:00 pm
Where: Morbid Anatomy Museum
424 Third Ave. Brooklyn

Price: $8
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An Illustrated lecture by Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Museum Co-Founder and author of The Anatomical Venus

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.

Buy tickets/get more info now