Category Archives: Anatomy

Today, the incomparable Mütter Museum of Philadelphia will be hosting an epic Day of the Dead party. Stop by at noon or four PM to catch me expounding on medical museums, memento mori, and morbidity as keynote speaker; stay for the party, complete with food, drink, music and sugar skulls!

Hope very much to see you there.

The Mütter Museum’s 3nd Annual Day of the Dead Festival
Come celebrate this traditional Mexican holiday with an all-day event at the Mütter Museum! Decorate sugar skulls, enjoy traditional food and drink, visit the Museum, hear from guest speaker, artist Joanna Ebenstein and see an exclusive show by local personality Grover Silcox!

- 10AM: Museum opens and sugar skull decorating begins
- 12PM and 4PM: Talk by Artist Joanna Ebenstein
- 5 - 6:30PM: Guided museum tour, exclusively for Friends of the Mütter
- 6:30 - 8PM: Exclusive performance by Grover Silcox

Sponsored by the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

(NOTE: Registration is not required for daytime festivities and is free with Museum admission; registration IS required, with additional cost for admission, to Silcox production.)

For more information on the Mütter Museum 3rd Annual Day of the Dead Festival, click here.

Image: "The Mütter Museum : Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Human skulls, backroom; 19th Century" From Anatomical Theatre Exhibition

Yes, the rumors, bizarre as they are, are true. Obscura Antiques and Oddities--my absolute favorite store in the world, see images above--is now the base, inspiration, location, and cast-provider for "Oddities," a new reality TV show (sic) that will be shown on The Discovery Channel starting next Thursday. The show stars not only friends and friends-of-the-blog Evan Michelson (Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence) and Mike Zohn--the proprietors or the inimitable Obscura Antiques--but also an array of other fascinating friends and collectors who travel in their circle.

With this cast, setting, and array of possible situations, "Oddities" will doubtless make unusually compelling reality television. I, for one--and please note, I generally HATE reality TV!--can't wait to see it!

More about the show--which premieres next Thursday, November 4th--from today's New York Post (which, although it seems to miss the point somewhat, provides a good description of the action):

Manhattan's own Obscura Antiques & Oddities and its owners, Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson, are the focus of a new series, "Oddities," premiering Nov. 4 at 9:30 p.m. on Discovery Channel. It'll air Thursdays at 9 p.m. thereafter.

The shop, located at 280 East 10th (between 1st Avenue and Avenue A) has a cornucopia of just-plain-weird stuff, like human gallstones, late 19th century poison bottles and bizarre medical instruments. And Zohn and Michelson seem just as colorful (he's a "creative taxidermy" winner; she's into Victorian mourning jewelry and was in a "Goth fetish band," whatever that is).

In the first episode, Mike finds a mummified cat in the private collection of "an eccentric artist" (ya think?) but worries it might be putrefying. Yeeeccchh. He also informs a customer, who thought he had a collection of musket balls, that they're actually something else entirely. I won't spoil it for you.

The second episode finds Evan encountering a puppeteer who's looking for a prosthetic limb, and a customer who has what appears to be a dead body in the trunk of his car.

Good times.

The show premieres Nov. 4 at 9:30 p.m. on Discovery Channel; after the launch, it will air Thursdays at 9 PM. You can find out more about Obscura Antiques and Oddities by clicking here; you can see a recent MA Post on the story by clicking here.

Thanks to Lord Whimsy for alerting me to the official announcement.

Radiolab's Sharon Shattuck on parasites tonight at Observatory! Full details below; hope to see you there.

Parasites: A User’s Guide
A Short Film Screening with Filmmaker and Ecologist Sharon Shattuck, Radiolab Affiliate
Date: Tuesday, October 26
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5

The word “parasite” comes with loads of vile connotations, but in nature, nothing is purely good or evil. In the 27-minute experimental documentary “Parasites: A User’s Guide,” filmmaker Sharon Shattuck embarks on a journey to decode some of the most misunderstood creatures on earth.

The dramatic rise in autoimmune diseases, asthma, and allergies since the turn of the last century has confounded scientists, but some researchers think they have uncovered the key to controlling the skyrocketing rates: tiny parasitic worms called ‘helminths.’ Using a blend of handmade and digital animation, film, and music, Sharon dives headlong into the controversial discourse surrounding ‘helminthic therapy,’ with help from scientific researchers, proactive patients and a renegade entrepreneur named Jasper Lawrence. Through the seeming oxymoron of the ‘helpful parasite,’ Sharon questions the nature of our relationship with parasites–and suggests a new paradigm for the future. “Parasites: A User’s Guide” is a film about ecology, healing, and worms.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker and an active helminth patient.

Check out the film’s website for more info: http://www.parasites-film.com

Bio: Before moving to Brooklyn, Sharon Shattuck studied tropical botany, and worked as a researcher with the Field Museum and the Smithsonian Institute in Panama. Following a grad stint in documentary media, she now works as an animator with Wicked Delicate Films (producers of “King Corn,” 2007) in Brooklyn, and is a contributor to the WNYC science show ‘Radiolab.’ Now, Sharon is touring the mainstream film fest circuit with her quirky science film “Parasites: A User’s Guide,” demonstrating that science can be both informative AND entertaining.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

"Tall Tales of the Totem Pole: The Intercultural Biography of an Icon" with Aaron Glass tonight at Observatory! Hope to see you there.

Tall Tales of the Totem Pole: The Intercultural Biography of an Icon
An illustrated talk by anthropologist Aaron Glass
Date: TONIGHT! Sunday, October 24
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Books will be available for sale and signing

To mark the release of The Totem Pole: An Intercultural History, co-author Aaron Glass will discuss how carved heraldic monuments from the Northwest Coast have become central symbols for the Native American at large. Dispelling many common myths, he reconstructs the intercultural history of the art form from the late 1700s—when Europeans first arrived on the coast—to the present, and describes how two centuries of colonial encounter transformed these indigenous carvings into a category of popular imagination and souvenir kitsch. Glass presents theories on the origin of the totem pole; its spread from the Northwest Coast to World’s Fairs and global theme parks; the history of tourism and its appropriation as a signifier of place; the role of governments, museums, and anthropologists in collecting and restoring poles; and the part that these carvings have continuously played in Native struggles for sovereignty over their cultures and lands. From the (many) world’s tallest totem pole(s) to the smallest, from depictions of whites on poles to the use of poles in advertising, this talk will explore the multifarious histories of these iconic forms.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Aaron Glass is an anthropologist and artist who works with indigenous people in British Columbia and Alaska. His past research, along with a companion film “In Search of the Hamat’sa” examined the ethnographic representation and performance history of the Kwakwaka’wakw “Cannibal Dance.” He has published widely on various aspects of First Nations art, media, and performance on the Northwest Coast, and was recently involved in the restoration of Edward Curtis’s 1914 silent film, “In the Land of the Headhunters.” Glass is currently an Assistant Professor at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, where he is curating the exhibit “Objects of Exchange,” opening in January 2011.

To find out more, click here. You can read more about "The Material Transformation of a Cultural Icon" on Aaron Glass' blog Material World by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

Image: Model pole by Charlie James, now in the UBC Museum of Anthropology, via Material World.

Tomorrow night at Observatory, join Mark Jacobson--author of the new book The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans--as he details the story of his journey into the world of myth, madness and history prompted by the delivery of a lampshade made of human skin upon his doorstep.

You can read an excerpt from the book (which will be available for sale and signing at the event) in New York Magazine by clicking here.

Full details follow; hope very much to see you there!

The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans
An illustrated lecture and book signing with Mark Jacobson, author
Date: Friday, October 22
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Books will be available for sale and signing

Few growing up in the aftermath of World War II will ever forget the horrifying reports that Nazi concentration camp doctors had removed the skin of prisoners to makes common, everyday lampshades. In The Lampshade, bestselling journalist Mark Jacobson tells the story of how he came into possession of one of these awful objects, and of his search to establish the origin, and larger meaning, of what can only be described as an icon of terror.

Jacobson’s mind-bending historical, moral, and philosophical journey into the recent past and his own soul begins in Hurricane Katrina–ravaged New Orleans. It is only months after the storm, with America’s most romantic city still in tatters, when Skip Henderson, an old friend of Jacobson’s, purchases an item at a rummage sale: a very strange looking and oddly textured lampshade. When he asks what it’s made of, the seller, a man covered with jailhouse tattoos, replies, “That’s made from the skin of Jews.” The price: $35. A few days later, Henderson sends the lampshade to Jacobson, saying, “You’re the journalist, you find out what it is.” The lampshade couldn’t possibly be real, could it? But it is. DNA analysis proves it.

This revelation sends Jacobson halfway around the world, to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, where the lampshades were supposedly made on the order of the infamous “Bitch of Buchenwald,” Ilse Koch. From the time he grew up in Queens, New York, in the 1950s, Jacobson has heard stories about the human skin lampshade and knew it to be the ultimate symbol of Nazi cruelty. Now he has one of these things in his house with a DNA report to prove it, and almost everything he finds out about it is contradictory, mysterious, shot through with legend and specious information.

Through interviews with forensic experts, famous Holocaust scholars (and deniers), Buchenwald survivors and liberators, and New Orleans thieves and cops, Jacobson gradually comes to see the lampshade as a ghostly illuminator of his own existential status as a Jew, and to understand exactly what that means in the context of human responsibility.

Mark Jacobson has been a staff writer and contributing editor at the Village Voice, Esquire, Natural History, Rolling Stone. He is currently contributing editor at New York Magazine. He is the author of many books including the novels Gojiro and currently, The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story From Buchenwald to New Orleans, as recently featured in a recent issue of New York Magazine. To find out more, click here.

To find out more, click here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

I have just been alerted to the launching of a new exhibit at the British Museum, "Journey Through the Afterlife: The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead." The exhibit, as the British Museum website explains, will show not only examples of the Book of the Dead never before seen, but also funerary figures, statues and coffins illustrating "the the many stages of the journey from death to the afterlife, including the day of burial, protection in the tomb, judgement, and entering the hereafter," all with the aim of discovering "the important mythical and spiritual ideas of ancient Egyptian life and death."

Following is the full text description from the British Museum Website:

Journey Through the Afterlife:
The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

Follow the ancient Egyptians’ journey from death to the afterlife in this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition focusing on the Book of the Dead.

The ‘Book’ was not a single text but a compilation of spells designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld, ultimately ensuring eternal life.

Many of the examples of the Book of the Dead in the exhibition have never been seen before, and many are from the British Museum’s unparalleled collection. These beautifully illustrated spells on papyrus and linen were used for over 1,000 years, and the oldest examples are over 3,500 years old.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these fascinating and fragile objects on display.

In addition to the unique works on papyrus and linen, superbly crafted funerary figurines (shabtis), amulets, jewellery, statues and coffins illustrate the many stages of the journey from death to the afterlife, including the day of burial, protection in the tomb, judgement, and entering the hereafter.

Digital media and recent research will be used to interactively interpret the Book of the Dead and complete scrolls will be reassembled and presented in their original form for the first time.

Journey with the Book of the Dead to discover the important mythical and spiritual ideas of ancient Egyptian life and death.

You can find out more about the exhibit--which runs from November 4 until March 6-- on the British Museum homepage by clicking here, can watch a short video introduction to the exhibition by clicking here, and can read more about it in today's Guardian by clicking here.

Image: Depiction of the weighing of the heart ritual from the papyrus of Ani, c1275 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum; from The Gaurdian