A new exhibition offering an intimate look at centuries of anatomical artwork. Meet the anonymous bodies opened up for inspection, and discover the human stories that were left in the margins.
For centuries, anatomical art has brought the dead to life in striking images, as alluring as they are disturbing. It depicts the body in meticulous detail: skin, bones, muscles, organs. But these drawings can expose far more – surgical art offers a tantalising glimpse into the tastes and desires of the artists who shaped our understanding of the body today. Whose bodies were used? Who decided how they were depicted? And what do these drawings tell us about the societies that made them?
Beneath the Sheets offers an intimate look into Thackray’s extensive anatomical artwork collection. Across centuries of printed pages, we meet anonymous models turned into muses, classical nudes repurposed as teaching aids, and bodies opened up for inspection – all in the name of scientific progress.
It also shine a light on some of the stories left in the margins: the women and people of colour who were objectified, dissected, or displayed, yet rarely given a voice. For the first time, audiences can see what is thought to be the only Black body in any Victorian anatomical atlas, drawn by anatomical master Joseph Maclise. The illustration was removed from the 1851 US edition of his book Surgical Anatomy, with American audiences judged unready for black and white bodies placed on an equal footing.
Provocative. Beautiful. Unsettling. Beneath the Sheets asks us to confront the human realities that gave us our understanding of the body that medicine has today, one drawing at a time.
Type of event: Exhibition