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We are very excited to announce an upcoming conference taking place at Brown University and The Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island from May 6-8 on the topic of "Lost Museums." Speakers will include Morbid Anatomy Museum creative director Joanna Ebenstein with "Notes on a Speculative Recreation of the Lost Cabinet of Dutch Anatomist, Moralist, Museologist and Artist Frederik Ruysch; UCL's Petra Lange-Berndt with "Pedagogy of the Ruin: Mark Dion’s Academy of Things, Dresden 2014; former Coney Island Museum director Aaron Beebe on "Enthusiasm, Wonder, and “Stuff” in the New Dime Museum;" and a keynote by Rosamund Purcell.  Tickets, which appear to be free, can be found here . Details and full schedule follow; you can find out more here . Hope very much to see you there! Held in conjunction with the year-long exhibition project on Brown’s lost Jenks Museum , the symposium addresses the history of museums from a new direction: not t...

Following is a guest post by Evan Michelson , Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence and star of TV's Oddities . Here, she tells the fascinating story of "George's Arms" (seen above), her contribution to our current Collector's Cabinet exhibition , which closes March 29th. You can see Evan speak in person about objects in her collection at our closing party on March 29th, on which more here ; you can also purchase a full color, illustrated exhibition catalog with texts written by the collectors (only eight dollars!) here . Antique and vintage prosthetics are uncanny, beautiful objects. They are almost always anonymous, whatever stories they have to tell being limited (at best) to a name inked or carved into the wood. This particular pair of prosthetic arms, however, comes not just with a name, but with an inspiring tale of survival, courage and human resilience. They belonged to Mr. George Hunlock of Danville, PA, a brakeman for the Delaware, Lackawanna and W...

Our friend Jo Hatton --Natural History keeper at London's excellent Horniman Musuem--has just alerted me to a wonderful looking project they are attempting to fund via Kickstarter. Your support will also win you a number of lovely rewards including art prints and photo books. Following is a description of the project; for more information, visit the Horniman's Art Fund page , Twitter feed, or website . Please consider supporting this unique and worthwhile project! We want to stage an exhibition of Mark Fairnington's paintings alongside their inspiration, our collection's hidden taxidermy treasures. We need your help to fund Mark Fairnington’s autumn exhibition at the Horniman Museum and Gardens, where we will display his paintings alongside the specimens that inspired them. The objects will be presented as they are in storage, evoking the wonder Mark experienced when he found them for the first time.  Mark Fairnington is a British painter whose work explores the linea...

Below, film maker in residence Ronni Thomas--director of The M idnight Archive --explains his attraction to 18th century phantasmagoria magic lantern shows, as explored in his first "Morbid Anatomy Presents" film, starring Mervyn Heard, author, of Phantasmagoria: The Secret Life of the Magic Lantern . You can view the film above; Stay tuned for more episodes which will premiere monthly on our new You Tube channel, which can be found here ! P.S.  Happy Birthday, Mervyn Heard! I confess... In fact, I am proud to admit... When the lights go out, and my family are all safely tucked away to sleep, I scour the internet endlessly searching, in the dark, for... scary videos (what will the neighbors think?). In fact, ever since I was able to change the channel, I would click through ways to put myself through some sort of emotional torment. From 80s slasher flicks, to stories of demonic possession, to forcing myself to go into my basement with all the lights off to find the booge...

Happy Ash Wednesday! The following quote, from "The History and Meaning of Ash Wednesday" By Dr. Richard P. Bucher, makes clear the relationship between traditional memento mori and the Ash Wednesday tradition of ashes on the forehead: In the typical Ash Wednesday observance, Christians are invited to the altar to receive the imposition of ashes, prior to receiving the holy Supper. The Pastor applies ashes in the shape of the cross on the forehead of each, while speaking the words, "For dust you are and to dust you shall return" (Genesis 3:19). This is of course what God spoke to Adam and Eve after they eaten of the forbidden fruit and fallen into sin. These words indicated to our first parents the bitterest fruit of their sin, namely death. In the context of the Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes, they remind each penitent of their sinfulness and mortality, and, thus, their need to repent and get right with God before it is too late... --The History and Meaning of ...

Following is a guest post by Morbid Anatomy Museum A.J. Mel l docent on the mid-20th century phenomenon of "sick humor," as inspired by The Penguin Book of Sick Verse , a book which he suggested for (and which now resides in) the Morbid Anatomy Library . Hope you enjoy! The Return of the Repressed: Sick Humor from Both Sides of the Atlantic By A.J. Mell Among the obscure jewels to be found in the Morbid Anatomy Library is The Penguin Book of Sick Verse , a British poetry anthology which never came out in America and hasn’t been reissued since its publication in 1963. I first learned about it through a passing reference in Rob Young’s history of the British folk-rock movement, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (Faber and Faber, 2011). Apparently the collection was a favorite of Fairport Convention founder Richard Thompson, whose own mordant lyrics might fit nicely into an updated edition. (He also set music to one of the book’s offerings, George Painter...

Happy Almost Valentine's Day! Hope to see you at February 14th's Love Cults, Drugs and the Hypnotic Arts with Mel Gordon, author of Voluptuous Panic and Grand Guiginol ! And, to celebrate the day, here is a wax heart as seen at the Josephinum Museum in Vienna, Austria.