Saturday, April 6, 2024
9 am - 10 am: tour of MUSA Anatomy Museum
11:00 am - 1:30 pm: Conference: Sala Del Lazzaretto of the Ospedale della Pace
2:30 pm - 5 pm: Tours of Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Storia della Medicina di Napoli

Meeting place: 9am at the entrance to Ospedale devil Incurabili, Via Maria Longo 50 (near the MANN archeological museum).

Admission: $35

Locations:

• MUSA Anatomy Museum of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli (Via Luciano Armanni, 5, 80138 Napoli NA, Italy)

• Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Storia della Medicina di Napoli (Via Luciano Armanni, 21, 80138 Napoli NA, Italy)

Extra Class: Paint your own Roman Memento Mori in original encaustic with Eleanor Crook sold separately here

Please note: All programs in English

Join Morbid Anatomy this April in Naples, Italy for a day-long leap into the intersections of anatomy, art and embodiment in Naples. Attendees will get to know the collections—and beyond!—via a symposium with illustrated lectures by international curators, scholars, and makers along with guided museum tours Dr Gennaro Rispoli, surgeon, alchemist and director of Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Storia della Medicina di Napoli and of the Cultural association Il Faro Di Ippocrate.

We’ll begin the day with a tour of the magnificent historical MUSA Anatomy Museum of the University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli,” which presents over 3,000 items in beautiful Memento Mori-themed wooden showcases. Its most famous artifact is a humerus bone prepared in 1543 by the revolutionary anatomist Vesalius, author of De humani corporis. It also features many spectacular wax anatomical and pathological models from the 18th and 19th century, and a collection of human skulls stretching back to 1st Century BCE, some of which come from excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Next, we’ll move to the gorgeous Sala Del Lazzaretto at the Ospedale della Pace—a former 16th century hospital for incurables, now and UNESCO World Heritage Site—for a conference featuring talks on the Neapolitan Skull Cult and devotions to souls in purgatory, the overlaps between anatomy and surrealism, the body casts made by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, and more. Our international roster of speakers will include museum director Dr Gennaro Rispoli, Italian anthropologist Marino Niola, university lecturer Ivan Cenzi or Bizarro Bazar, British sculptor Eleanor Crook, and artist Chiara Ambrosio, introduced and moderated by our founder Joanna Ebenstein.

After a break for lunch, we’ll meet back for a tour of the Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Storia della Medicina di Napoli, with its 18th century nativity scene with healers, charlatans, alchemists, and sufferers of plague and other diseases; its “Gennaro Rispoli” library with approximately 8000 volumes focused on the history of medicine reconstruction in full scale of an alchemical pharmacy; and a reconstruction of an alchemical pharmacy

Speakers at the symposium will include:

• Dr Gennaro Rispoli, surgeon, alchemist and director of the Museo delle Arti Sanitarie e Storia della Medicina di Napoli and of the Cultural association Il Faro Di Ippocrate, focused on highlighting the deep historical ties between art and medicine.

• Ivan Cenzi, University of Padua Lecturer and Creator of Bizarro Bazar, on surrealism and anatomy

• Medical artist Eleanor Crook on the anatomy of archaeology: sculpted bodies, and the body casts made by Vesuvius

• Artist Chiara Ambrosio with “My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor & Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and the Radio”