International Conference 'Cultures of Anatomical Collections', Leiden, 15-17 February 2012
The international conference ‘Cultures of Anatomical Collections’ will take place in Leiden from 17-19 February 2012. It explores anatomical preparations and collections (preparations of human material as well as wax and other models) as important parts of cultural heritage.
- Introduction
- Program 15 February 2012
- Program 16 February 2012
- Program 17 February 2012
- More information
Introduction
This means that we treat them in a similar way as we would examine other historical artifacts stored in today’s museum. Although the history of anatomy and anatomical illustrations has been a popular topic in the history of medicine during the last decade, the history of its material remains has been somewhat neglected. And yet, in particular when taking into account recent historiographies of materiality and medical practices, it offers challenging interdisciplinary questions on the history of anatomy as a whole.
The conference addresses questions such as: How do the technical details of anatomical preparations tell us about the ideas of their maker; how do ideas on beauty and perfection shape preparations; how were preparations handled and used for teaching purposes: how does the interest of non-medical audiences shape anatomical preparations? On collections as a whole we can ask: How are particular collections build up; how do decisions of curators affect the build-up of collections; how does the housing of a collection affect its outlook and popularity?
Program 15 February 2012
Location: Museum Boerhaave, Lange St. Agnietenstraat 10
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14.15 Registration
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14.45 Welcome
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15.00 – 16.00
Beauty, Perfection and Materiality in Early Modern Anatomical Collections
* Rina Knoeff – Patients, Preparations and the Public eye
* Ruben Verwaal – From Body to Specimen: Physicians and their Patients in Dutch Pathological Collections, 1770-1830
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16.00 – 16.30 Coffee / Tea
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16.30 – 18.00
* Roberta Ballestriero – Between Beauty and Anatomy, Artistic Influences and Influence of Art on Wax Anatomical Collections
* Carin Berkowitz – Envisioning Anatomy and Practicing Pedagogy: Crafting Anatomical Science through Systems of Display in Enlightenment Britain
* Bjorn Okholm Skaarup – Anatomical Collections in the Early Modern Art Academy
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18.00 – 20.00 Buffet dinner
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20.00 - 22.00
Keynote Lectures, organized together with Museum Boerhaave and Studium Generale
* Andrew Cunningham – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Or, what Richard Owen did to John Hunter’s Collection
* Ruth Richardson – Performance Reading: Organ Music... about the specimens' relations to each other within the Museum, at night
Program 16 February 2012
Location: Gravensteen, Pieterskerkhof 6, room 111
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9.00 – 9.15 Coffee / Tea
- 9.15 – 9.30 Welcome by Wim van der Doel, dean of the Leiden Faculty of Arts
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9.30 – 11.00
Beauty, Perfection and Materiality in Early Modern Anatomical Collections
* Anita Guerrini (keynote lecture) - Inside the Charnel House: making and showing early modern skeletonsi
* Marieke Hendriksen - The meaning of mercury: materiality and aesthesis in the eighteenth century Leiden anatomical collections
* Lucia Dacome – An inescapable and almost incredible pleasure’: Anatomical Waxworks in mid-eighteenth-century Italy
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11.00 – 11.30 Coffee / Tea
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11.30 - 13.00
Anatomical Collections and Scientific Medicine in the Nineteenth Century
* Simon Chaplin (keynote lecture) - Medical museums, Modernism and 'the Need for Reform'
* Hieke Huistra - Dead body in the closet - How the public disappeared from the Leiden anatomical cabinet
* Cindy Stelmackowich – Anatomical Collections and Scientific Medicine in the Nineteenth Century
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13.00 - 14.00 Lunch
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14.00 – 15.00
* Laurens de Rooy – Martinus Woeneman’s German Trip and the Foundation of Dutch Experimental Embryology
* Stephen Kenny – How Southern Culture Shaped Museum Collecting: African-Americans as Medical Specimens
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15.00 – 15.30 Coffee / Tea
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15.30 – 17.00
Handling Anatomical Collections
* Sam Alberti (keynote lecture) - From Subject to Object: Body Parts as Artefacts
* Tim Huisman - From famulus to custos; who was the anatomy servant?
* Paul Lambers – The Historical Collection on Zoological Anatomy and Morphology of the University Museum of the University of Utrecht
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17.00 Drinks at the Faculty Club (Rapenburg 73, opposite the Academy Building)
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19.30 Conference dinner (Prentenkabinet, Kloksteeg 25)
Program 17 February 2012
Location: Gravensteen, Pieterskerkhof 6, room 111
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9.00 – 9.30 Coffee / Tea
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9.30 - 11.00
Handling Anatomical Collections
* Tricia Close König – Catalogues and Observations, Logbooks and Atlases: Paper Technologies and 20th Century Pathological Collections
* Flavio Häner – More than the Sum of Its Parts – Anatomical Collections and Museums as Historical Objects
Anatomical Collections as Public History
* Birgit Nemec – Visual Cultures of Anatomy on Display. Places, Politics and Publics of Anatomical Images in Early 20th Century Vienna
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11.00 – 11.30 Coffee / Tea
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11.30 – 13.00
* Anna Märker (keynote lecture) - Model students and ambassador users: the role of the public for the global marketing and distribution of nineteenth-century anatomical models
* Alfons Zarzoso and José Pardo Tomás – Rise and Fall of the Roca Museum: A Scientific Collection for the Laity
* Kathryn A. Hoffmann – Lovely Bones, Lost Histories. Bringing Collections back to the Public
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13.00 – 14.00 Lunch
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14.00 – 15.30
* Nike Fakiner – Sites for Frightening Experiences: Anatomical Exhibitions in the 19th and the Beginning of 20th Century Germany
* Glenn Harcourt – Terrifying Beauty: The Public Face of the Mütter Museum
* Karen Ingham – Narrative Remains and Anatomical Collections: An Intervention at London’s Hunterian Museum
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15.30 – 16.00 Coffee / Tea
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16.00 – 16.45
* Lisa Temple-Cox – Making Myself a Monster: Self-Portraiture as Medical Specimen
* Dries van Dam – Conservation issues in the Leiden anatomical collections
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17.00: visit to the anatomical museum at the Leiden University Medical Centre (Hippocratespad 21)
More information
Registration form: http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/registrationform.pdf
Registration deadline: 1 February 2012
Organisers: Rina Knoeff, Marieke Hendriksen, Hieke Huistra. Contact: conference@culturesofcollecting.nl
The conference is generously funded by the Stichting Historia Medicinae, the Thijssen-Schoute Stichting, the Leids Universitair Fonds (LUF), and the Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines (LUICD).