Depth Studies: Illustrated Anatomies from Vesalius to Vicq d'Azyr

17 March–7 June 1992

In conjunction with the University of Chicago’s centennial celebration symposium, Imaging the Body: Art and Science in Modern Culture, and Professor Barbara Maria Stafford’s seminar Depth Studies, the Smart Museum has compiled nearly 20 illustrated anatomy texts from the 16th through the 20th centuries. The exhibition explores the diverse ways in which anatomy text illustrators from the Renaissance to the Modern Age fathomed the realms of biology and physiology. The composite books included in the exhibition, on loan from the Joseph Regenstein Library’s Department of Special Collections, range from small, portable manuals for private use to folio editions used to teach physicians, surgeons, and artists. The exhibition includes an etching from William Cowper’s Myotomia Reformata, or An Anatomical Treatise on the Muscles of the Human Body, published in 1724, and the cover of a pamphlet entitled Phrenology: It’s Principles, Proofs, Etc. (1887), which illustrated the way this now-debunked scientific movement permeated Victorian society. In addition to the Smart Museum’s exhibition and the Imaging symposium, the Art Institute of Chicago has displayed two concurrent print and drawing shows: Metaphors of Biological Structure/Architectural Construction and Imaging the Body: From Fragment to Total Display. 

The exhibition was funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council. 

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