Anatomy Museum

Anatomy museums contain some of the most compelling and challenging displays of the human body. This innovative book focusing on one such museum – in Scotland's northeast – opens up a wide-ranging history of deceased bodies on display, from medieval relics, to nineteenth-century mega-collections of human remains, to the controversial Body Worlds  exhibition that is touring the globe. A surprisingly varied and ever-changing material and visual culture of human anatomy emerges through this history, shaped by multiple factors, including colonialism and war, as well as shifts in medical institutions, technologies and media.

“"This book concerns the post-mortem experience of those patients, or parts of them, as well as the lived experience of the students who studied them. It is as much a history of anatomical education (in which museums played a changing role) as it is of this type of museum itself. It is a peculiar, but ultimately successful, mix of a history of animated display, reviewing how anatomical specimens have been 'brought to life' over a period of several centuries, and a specific social and cultural case study of the Anatomy Museum of Marischal College (Aberdeen), from its origins in the 1830s until its closure in 2009. . . . The author draws on her experience of using the museum, prior to the transfer of the collections elsewhere, and this lavishly illustrated book contains several photographs drawn from the small archival room she discovered there. . . . Innovative."”

"If you are not comfortable with pictures of dead human bodies, this may not be ideal bedtime reading. However, the topic is covered sensitively and with due reference to social, cultural, and historical contexts. . . . The many illustrations complement the text, particularly the sections about anatomical images and art depicting the human body in death. Some of the historical photographs are of lower quality, but their inclusion is valuable, as they help bring history alive. . . . As many anatomical museums are not open to the public, this book provides an alternative insight. Mostly fascinating, sometimes disturbing, but very readable, Anatomy Museum will be of interest to human biologists, medical professionals, and historians of medicine, as well as artists."-- "Biologist"
"Keenly aware of the broader context and making liberal use of other collections in the UK, Hallam shows us how dynamic and diverse a successful collection like this was . . . She guides us beyond the museum to other anatomy spaces, especially the lecture theatre and the dissection room . . . Anatomy Museum is well worth reading. It is impeccably researched, nicely produced and lavishly illustrated. It spurs us to think differently about collections of all kinds, and relationships between the things in them. . . . From papier-mâché to plastic, from plastinates to plasticine, there is beauty to be found in the anatomy museum."-- "Museums Journal"

Elizabeth Hallam is Director of Cultural History at the University of Aberdeen. Her books include the co-authored Beyond the Body: Death and Social Identity (1999) and Death, Memory and Material Culture (2001).

The display of dead bodies is not a practice confined to morgues and funeral homes. Anatomy museums around the world showcase preserved corpses in service of education and medical advancement, but they are little-known and have been largely hidden from the public eye. In this book, Elizabeth Hallam investigates the anatomy museum and how it reveals the fascination and fears that surround the dead body in Western societies. Hallam explores the history of these museums and how they operate in the current cultural environment. Their regulated access increasingly clashes with evolving public mores regarding the taboos surrounding the exposed body, as demonstrated by the internationally popularity of the Body Worlds exhibition. This book examines such related topics as artistic works that employ the images of dead bodies and body parts and the larger ongoing debate over the disposal of corpses. Issues such as aesthetics and science, organ and body donations for medicine and public education, and the dead body in Western religion and ritual are also discussed here in fascinating depth."Anatomy Museum" provides a cultural and historical perspective on the controversial and emotive practices that render the dead body visible in contemporary Western societies. Moreover, it dares to investigate the techniques of preservation, display and visual representation that hold the dead within the social and cultural spaces of the living.

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