This symposium will explore ideas of enchantment and enlightenment, or the sublimation of the magical into the rational world as seen in material culture, and will feature participants from The Wellcome Collection and Wellcome Library; The Gordon Museum of Pathology, as well as artists, and scholars; full line up here
Date: Saturday September 8
Time: 11am - 5:30 pm
Admission: £15.00 (Tickets here)
Location: ** Viktor Wynd Fine Art / The Last Tuesday Society
Address: 11 Mare Street, London, E8 4RP
Produced by Morbid Anatomy
A one day symposium featuring a host of scholars, writers, and practitioners exploring in panels, illustrated lectures and discussion the intersections explored by the exhibition “Ecstatic Raptures and Immaculate Corpses: Visions of Death Made Beautiful in Italy.” Themes discussed will include enchantment and enlightenment, or the sublimation of the magical into the rational world; the secret life of objects, or the non-rational allure of objects and the psychology of collecting; and beautiful death and incorruptible bodies, or the shared drive to immortalize the human body and aestheticize death in both medicine and Catholicism.
11-12:
Introduction by Moderator Joanna Ebenstein
Keynote panel: Enchantment and Enlightenment (20 minute presentations followed by moderated discussion)
Moderated by Joanna Ebenstein
• David L. Martin, Curious Visions of Modernity: Enchantment, Modernity and the Sacred
• Simon Werrrett, Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts and Sciences in European History
12-1: Lunch
1-2:30 The Secret Life of Objects: The Allure of Objects and the Psychology of Collecting (20 minute presentations followed by moderated discussion)
Moderated by Ross MacFarlane, Wellcome Library
• Ross MacFarlane, The Wellcome Library
• Petra Lange-Berndt, University College London
• Kate Forde, The Wellcome Collection
2:30-3:00 break
3:00-5:30 Beautiful Death and Incorruptible Bodies: Eternal Life and aestheticized death in medicine and Catholicism
(15 minute presentations followed by moderated discussion)
Moderated by John Troyer, Center for Death and Society, University of Bath
• Eleanor Crook, Wax artist
• John Troyer, Center for Death and Society, University of Bath
• Gemma Angel, PhD Student ad UCL History of Art
• Anna Maerker, Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775–1815
• Simon Chaplin, Wellcome Library
• Sigrid Sarda, Wax artist
• William Edwards, The Gordon Museum