A close up photograph of the skull of enigmacursor, the dog-sized herbivorous dinosaur newly on display at the Natural History Museum since last summer, seen against the glowing red globe of the museum's Earth Hall. The composition of the image vaguely recalls the iconic Jurassic Park logo.
Five year old is considerably less excited by a new dinosaur at the Natural History Museum than daddy is.
Artists: Come and help turn the museum's exhibition gallery into a whimsical, magical garden for kids!
Details here: thackraymuseum.co.uk/about-us/wor...
Also, props to the second hardest working travelator in Yorkshire.
(Nothing's putting in the hard graft as much as the one on Gladiators, but this comes close)
Yes, it's an unconventional romantic ballet because the traditionally 'male lead' part is danced by a woman, and because the romance is same-sex. But mostly it's an unconventional romantic ballet because it turns out the real love story is between a woman and her diary.
Peak romantic. No notes.
Enjoyed @northernballet.bsky.social's witty, sexy, pleasingly Yorkshire production of Gentleman Jack (only partly because our current show also features a starring role for Anne Lister).
Particularly liked how much of it was about books, words and writing, but conveyed through movement.
Exciting to see our big pile of poo dumped in the middle of this shortlist! 💩🥇
A photo from a museum gallery of a display case and its interpretation. The white wall is covered by a curtain, lit from below with pink light to create a blushing gradient. Seen through the thin curtain, you can read a quote from Andreas Vesalius's Fabrica: "Perhaps you sometimes delight in consideration of the most perfectly constructed of all creatures". A tall banner hanging beside the display case shows one such perfectly constructed creature: an illustration from Fabrica of the principle muscles of the body on a skinless man striking a tragic pose against a background the rolling hills and tall spires of the Italian landscape.
A photo of a book on display in a museum gallery, the curtains and pink lighting of the gallery reflect of the glass of the vitrine. The book is opened to the contents page, outlining different parts of human anatomy. On the left hand page is 21st century a digital rendering of part of the bones of the spine, blood vessels and a kidney. On the right is the same 16th century Vesalius muscle illustration as in the first image.
Our new exhibition is the first time I've curated something as a linear chronology. But a circuit round a room is not just a straight line, so I made sure we begin and end with the same image: one of the muscle men from Vesalius's 1543 Fabrica, showing up again in the 2001 New Atlas of Human Anatomy
A photo of a table with people doing a craft involving making an anatomical flap manikin out of pictures of body parts and other collaging bits, such as images of plants and animals. Part of the Thackray Museum of Medicine's Anatomy Uncovered late event.
Popular adult craft too (some very wild and wacky takes on what should be on all the anatomical flaps here)
I did refer to these as "post-mortem paper dolls" in our new exhibition.
And, to shout out another great medical museum collection: Anyone who does want to have one of their own, Royal College of Physicians has some DIY craft instructions:
history.rcp.ac.uk/sites/defaul...
(3/3) From this first overview of the situation for over 20 years, it’s clear that it’s time for DCMS to review its failed historic Guidance, and introduce regulation for the retention of human tissue in legacy colonial collections.
Full story >> www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...
My Radio 4 appearance scoring very well with the "friends of my mum who live at the other end of the country and are unlikely to visit Leeds in the next 6 months" demographic.
Whether it's actually encouraging people who live round here to visit time will tell.
Here me talking sexy corpses on Radio 4 Front Row. (Episode also features Bridgerton and tourism tax)
Listen here:
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
A close up detail from the same image, showing two men quarreling, one holding a scalpel.
A close up detail of the same image. It shows a set of anatomists' tools: blades, knives, scalpels, a candle, and a pen in an inkpot.
Under the table, junior surgeons scrap for the chance to assist. But it's what's on the table that's more important: the tools of the trade. The scalpel, but also the pen. Dissection is integral to studying anatomy, but so is sharing the findings of dissections through books and images like this.
A close up detail of the same image, showing a man in robes, representing a depiction of the ancient Graeco-Roman physician Galen. Behind him you can just about see the arms of a monkey.
A close up detail of the same image. A man with a long beard - representing Hippocrates - looks down at a dog-like animal (sometimes said to be a goat)
Vesalius is flanked by the classical physicians Galen and Hippocrates, whose centuries' old accepted wisdom he debunked by dissecting actual human bodies.
Their reliance on understanding human anatomy through animal dissection is represented by them being paired with animal sidekicks.
A close up detail of the same image, showing a hooded monk in a praying position.
A close up detail from the same image of a man reaching into the pocket of thd man in front of him
A close up detail from the same image. A person is shown peering out from behind a column. They are hooded but appear potentially female.
The woman is the object of attention for a crowd of men from all sections of society. There's a praying monk, but also a man taking advantage of everyone's attention on the dissection to pick a pocket. There is even, half hidden behind a pillar, what looks like the only other woman in the scene.
A closer view of the previous image, showing a bearded man cutting into the woman's abdomen.
Beneath the looming memento mori of a giant skeletal reaper, Vesalius himself performs a dissection on an exposed female body (the only whole cadaver of a woman in the entire book).
It is reputedly based on a real dissection of an executed woman, conducted to prove she was not pregnant at the time
A busy black and white drawing of an anatomical dissection in the 1500s. A dead woman is being cut open in a crowded theatre. A skeleton hovers above her. She is in the centre of the image, with real world lighting spotlighting her body, while the edges of the frame have a pink glow from the surrounding lights.
Feature wall in our new exhibition: a huge blown up image of a dissection.
It is the title page of Andreas Vesalius's hugely influential De Humani Corporis Fabrica and contains a whole manifesto on the future of anatomy in its richly symbolic imagery.
A stack of steaming hot chocolate chip pancakes sitting on a plate that says "Pancakes?"
Pancake Day
“There are now more places to sell plasma than there are Costco stores [in the US] — and more are popping up in solidly middle-class neighborhoods”
A black card into which an anatomical heart illustration has been scratched, revealing flourescent rainbow colours
Anyone looking to make their own Sougy-esque anatomical images, scratch art crafts are a part of our half term offer.
thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/februa...
The poster for the Thackray Museum of Medicine's Beneath the Sheets exhibition, featuring the previous image of the man with his wrists bound above his head, on a lurid pink poster.
A baroque painting of Saint Sebastian. His arms are above his head, wrists bound in a very similar way to the anatomic illustration.
The main Catholic art reference point here, though, appears to be Guido Reni's infamously homoerotic depiction of the martyrdom of St Sebastian. No wonder Maclise's work has been seen as a "lost archive of queer expression".
A nineteenth-century illustration of a man with his chest open to reveal his internal organs. His hands are bound above his head. The picture is black and white, except the heart, which is coloured pink.
1850s - Couldn't not include the poster boy for our new exhibition, taken from Joseph Maclise's Surgical Anatomy. The pink heart really pops out like Christ's sacred heart in this monochrome image of the organs of the abdomen and thorax.
A wallchart showing a diagram of the of the circulatory system.
1940s - French-Canadian artist Pauline M. Lariviere broke with realist tradition to take influence from abstracts and cubism. She was less concerned with depicting organs as they appear in reality than with using colour, scale, and alternative angles to emphasise important details.
An anatomical chart of the nervous system, showing stylised organs in white lineart on a black background, and the nerves themselves as colourful abstract lines.
Sougy's wallcharts, intended for classrooms and lecture theatres, are characterised by stark black backgrounds and vibrant, almost flourescent, colourful linework, making them feel years ahead of their time.
1950s - Paul Sougy was a French curator at a natural history museum who was commissioned to draw a series of illustrations of the collections of 19th century naturalist and anatomist Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (who made incredible papier-mâché models of organs and animals).
A simplified diagram of the heart in red and blue on a black background.
As it's Valentine's Day: my favourite anatomical illustrations of hearts from the museum collection...
Leeds back-to-back housing, Cross Oswald St, 1970, photo by Nick Hedges.
When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured”
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
A simple but expressive wood carved owl, painted black with yellow eyes and bold red plumicorns. https://collections.thackraymuseum.co.uk/object-717-010
As people are posting their #SuperbOwl examples and the owl is the symbol of our fair city, here's an owl inkwell from the Thackray Museum collection.
This one was hand carved by a patient at Meanwood Park Hospital
