Pratique artistique et musée médical

Collect, Exchange, Display: Artistic Practice and the Medical Museum

Call for participations

(London, 6 June 2014)

For hundreds of years, medical collections have been sites of medical and artistic exchange. Not only were many of their contents created by artists and physicians, but the collections were also often compiled by doctors, who were themselves artistes manqués. Although medical museums have recently received attention in museological and historical studies, they remain relatively ignored within art historical scholarship.

This one-day conference will look at the anatomical, pathological or medical museum from the perspectives of art history and visual culture. Artists have utilised these spaces for the study of anatomy and pathology--as well as for ideas and inspiration--but what do we know about the artists, photographers and craftsmen and women who have worked within the museum? How can we theorise the collecting practices of the doctors who founded and/or ran these museums? What influence did these spaces and their contents have on artistic practice, visual representation and the writing of art and medical histories? How does the medical museum continue to play a role in contemporary art-making and medical learning? From the wax modelers to the commissioning physicians to the painters and sculptors who were inspired by its contents, this conference will spark a dialogue about the artistry of the medical museum.

We encourage papers on all visual aspects of the medical museum in any country from the seventeenth century to the present, and welcome papers from artists, curators and scholars from any discipline, as well as medical professionals.

This one-day conference will take place on 6 June 2014 in the MacRae Gallery of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London.

We anticipate publishing a selection of papers from the conference in an edited anthology.

Paper Proposals are due: 15 January 2014

Please send a 250-word abstract, along with a short CV (no more than two pages), to the conference organisers:

Dr Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Lecturer in Art History in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex, natashar@essex.ac.uk

Dr Mary Hunter, Assistant Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, Mary.Hunter2@mcgill.ca

For more information, please check the conference website: http://artisticpracticeandthemedicalmuseum.wordpress.com/

This conference has been generously funded by the Wellcome Trust.