Leonardo drew it, the Ink Spots sang about it, and Channel 4 broadcasts it. Anatomy has fascinated a multitude of people for centuries. And why not, for it shows us how we are. Anatomy Acts, currently at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre, is an exhibition formed from medical collections held in Scotland. These contain objects that represent medical thought across the UK and the rest of Europe from the fifteenth century to the present day. However, the way the exhibits are grouped in this exhibition means that some of the depth of the collections may be missed.
The drawings and models on display are beautifully crafted, and all have been created to record the latest thinking about, or investigations of, the body. Many were used as teaching aids, and consequently there are some exhibits that may not be for the squeamish or the sensitive! Anatomy Acts divides the objects into five themes, Growing & Forming, Feeling, Looking & Listening, Mirroring & Multiplying, and Charting. To varying degrees these themes can be thought of in more than one way, which gives a nice play on ideas. However not all the themes are successful, and it leaves the nagging doubt of whether playing with words has disrupted the potential of the exhibition.
The first theme, Growing & Forming, is given the whole of the first floor of the exhibition. The first section of this explores human anatomy. Amongst the exhibits there are mid-nineteenth century watercolours of reproductive organs next to early C20th high contrast black and white images of tumour sections. These latter images are abstract, and give the notion of ‘growing and forming’ rather sinister connotations. The second section of this theme explores animal anatomy, and here the concept of ‘growing and forming’ gets a bit lost. The connections with human anatomy are not clear and it is only by reading one of the books on display that it starts to make sense. John Bell’s 1797 book “The Anatomy of the Human Body Volume 2” is opened at a page showing a line drawing of a frog. The opposite page discusses and compares the respiratory systems of various animals – obviously at the time this was how anatomy was thought about. The final part of this theme returns to human anatomy, but the idea of ‘growing and forming’ becomes even more tenuous. It doesn’t necessarily detract from the exhibits, which are fascinating on their own, but it is slightly annoying.
Upstairs on the next floor the themes of Feeling and Looking & Listening are explored. Feeling is perhaps the least successful of all the themes. The introductory text explains the double meaning: artists express feeling in their work and surgeons and anatomists feel for parts of the body (through touch) in their work. This is all very well, but the exhibits don’t reflect these ideas at all. There are a few paintings that might be ‘art’ rather than ‘scientific representations’ and there’s an operating table, but otherwise the exhibits seem to be much the same as on the previous floor only without the animals. Looking & Listening explores ways of seeing and hearing the body as well as the anatomy of the ear and eye. This theme starts with a video projection of recent images of the body taken in Scottish hospitals. These would be more interesting if there was some explanation of the different imaging techniques and if there wasn’t the feeling that this is really an exercise in waving the flag for imaging in Scottish hospitals. Perhaps the most interesting exhibit in this section is the 1950s design for an ultrasound scanner. It looks huge, with disconcerting levers and dials that make it look like something from a sci-fi film. It’s a comment on how medical imaging techniques have changed in a relatively short space of time.
The final floor houses the themes Mirroring & Multiplying and Charting. The first of these is supposed to explore techniques such as stereoscopic images, but although there is one such image the rest of the content looks familiar. In fact, there are lots of obstetrics-related images here that surely should have belonged in the first theme. Finally, Charting is about plotting and mapping the human body…which is presumably what the images in the rest of the exhibition do.
The exhibits in Anatomy Acts could be represented in many ways. They are careful crafted objects of art. They also represent changing medical thought over many centuries; for example, William Harvey’s 1628 groundbreaking treatise on the heart and circulation is on display here. By showing changing attitudes to medicine and the practice of anatomy, the objects also reflect the wider social and cultural attitudes of their time. This depth of meaning falls victim to the themes chosen for the exhibition. The themes privilege the aesthetic interpretation over all the others and so many of the stories the objects are able to tell are hidden. That’s not to say they are impossible to find, but the onus is on the inquisitive and perhaps already knowledgeable visitor.
The emphasis on the aesthetic has two other knock-on effects. The exhibition contains some specially commissioned art work and poetry, but unfortunately some of this sits uneasily with the other exhibits as it doesn’t have the depth of the anatomical works. The exhibition also contains a handful of documents and objects from non-Western traditions. But as cultural attitudes to medicine and anatomy (Western or otherwise) are not properly explored, these objects feel tokenistic.
Anatomy Acts was created to promote Scottish medical collections, and there’s no doubt there is a lot to shout about. These exhibits are not only beautiful, they can tell us a lot about medicine over many centuries and about the society of the time. However, by choosing themes that don’t quite work much of this depth has been lost.
Anatomy Acts was at City Art Centre, Edinburgh in May and June 2006.
This article first appeared in Museums Journal in 2006
Rachel Souhami 