The Morbid Anatomy Museum
The Morbid Anatomy Museum (2014-2016) was a non-profit space founded by Joanna Ebenstein, Tracy Hurley Martin, Colin Dickey, Tonya Hurley, Laetitia Barbier, Evan Michelson and Aaron Beebe in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The museum was an expansion of Ebenstein's long-running project, the Morbid Anatomy Blog and Library. The museum building had a lecture and event space, a cafe and a store.
The museum was housed in former nightclub building the interior of which was re-modeled by architects Robert Kirkbride and Tony Cohn in 2014. In Ebenstein's words, the new space was designed to give a home for a "regular lecture series and DIY intellectual salon that brings together artists, writers, curators and passionate amateurs dedicated to what [Joanna Ebenstein] sums up as 'the things that fall through the cracks'".
The space focused on forgotten or neglected histories through exhibitions, education and public programming. Themes included nature, death and society, anatomy, medicine, arcane media, and curiosity and curiosities broadly considered. The artifacts featured in its rotating exhibitions were drawn from private collections and museums' storage spaces.