Exhibition Archive: Beneath the Sheets

Beneath the Sheets ran at Thackray between February and June 2026. For current exhibitions check out our What’s On pages. 

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 also expose much more than organs. Surgical art offers a tantalising glimpse into the tastes and desires of the artists who shaped our understanding of the body today. They drew from society’s most undesirable: the poor, sickly, marginalised and incarcerated, both victims of murder and their killers. 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. It dissects the power dynamics between the male gaze and the beautiful, objectified bodies of anatomical art, blurring boundaries between science, art, and erotica, and opening space for queer desire by sharing images of idealised male physiques and marginalised female pleasure.  

Anonymous models turned into muses, classical nudes repurposed as teaching aids, and bodies opened up for inspection – all in the name of scientific progress. Central to the exhibition is the work of anatomical master Joseph Maclise (1815-1880), in his seminal atlas Surgical Anatomy (1851). Using bodies from the Parisian morgues, Maclise’s highly skilled illustrations rendered the corpses of handsome young men into detailed, lifelike portraits. Pensive, moody, sometimes flirtatious, his poised figures recall the classical ideals of Renaissance art, celebrating the human form in all its complexity and beauty. Maclise left no letters or diaries, never married or had children. His private and interior life can only be witnessed in his work—a body of art that frequently returned to a favoured motif: artfully posed, technically accomplished, lovingly detailed images of handsome young naked men. 

We will trace this lineage back to the foundations of the field, including Charles Estienne’s 1545 book De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, loaned courtesy of The University of Manchester. Estienne’s images were essentially collages, body parts stitched together like Frankenstein’s creation from sketches of many dissections. The bodies in these images are no rotting cadavers, though, but are artfully imbued with reanimated life; striking vibrant poses in classical landscapes rich with allegorical symbolism.  

The exhibition also draws upon the work of Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), whose revolutionary 1543 De Humani Corporis Fabrica was the first major work to show human anatomy drawn directly from dissected bodies. It also highlights the little-told stories behind anatomical masterworks, such as the collaboration between obstetrician William Hunter (1718–1783) and draftsman Jan van Rymsdyk (c.1730–1790), whose rich illustrations of women’s reproductive organs and pregnant bodies exposed the lengths to which medical men would go in the pursuit of knowledge. In 1775, Hunter even went so far as to embalm the body of a friend’s wife for display in a glass cabinet.  

Beneath the Sheets investigates the histories of body procurement and exploitation, from the asylums and brothels of 19th century Paris to Scotland’s most high-profile murder case, The Trial of Burke and Hare (1828). One such victim of Burke and Hare was Mary Paterson (c.1800–1828), cited by historian Lisa Rosner as ‘the most notorious cadaver’. A posthumous object of anatomical fascination, medical men marvelled at her preserved beauty, raising troubling questions about class, violence and the male gaze. 

The exhibition aims to 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 Maclise. The illustration was removed from the 1851 US edition of Surgical Anatomy, with American audiences judged unready for black and white bodies placed on an equal footing.  

Thackray has commissioned a new film by the queer interdisciplinary artist Marlowe Mitchell, whose work explores the intersections between race and gender in archival material; which bodies have been othered, and which bodies have been excluded altogether. 

Provocative, beautiful and unsettling, Beneath the Sheets asks us to confront the human realities that gave us our understanding of the body that medicine has today, one page at a time. 

Dr Jack Gann, curator at Thackray Museum of Medicine, says:

“We are thrilled to take this opportunity of sharing some of the treasures of our collection that are rarely – if ever – seen in the flesh. These books and artworks are beautiful in themselves but they are also incredibly revealing. Our exhibition gives people a chance not just to see them but to see them in a new light, to look beyond the surface and consider what their approach to depicting a human body says about them. And us.” 

Jamie Taylor, Director of Collections, Learning and Programming, says:

“Beneath the Sheets challenges visitors to question whose bodies feature in anatomical textbooks, who was drawing them, and why. In an increasingly divided society, it is the people whose bodies don’t conform to an imagined sense of the normal who continue to be most politicised and marginalised. The bodies depicted in these pages belong to people who throughout history have been repressed, whose rights have been considered secondary, negligible, or ignored. Through the commissioned film by queer interdisciplinary artist Marlowe Mitchell, the exhibition also gives a space to those who have and continue to navigate this oppression to simply be themselves. We hope visitors consider the real people behind the illustrations and in doing so, better understand themselves and each other.”