Symposium: The Visual Culture of Medicine and Its Objects

September 23, 2014
Riggs Library, Georgetown University

Organizers: Keren Hammerschlag (Georgetown University)
and
Michael Sappol (National Library of Medicine)

The Department of Art and Art History at Georgetown University, in collaboration with the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine (National Institutes of Health), presents an interdisciplinary symposium dedicated to critically and creatively examining medical objects, broadly conceived. Presenters from diverse scholarly and professional backgrounds will undertake close readings of medical objects in a variety of media and genres—book illustrations, paintings, sculptures, pamphlets, photographs, instruments, motion pictures and more—from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Georgetown University, and other repositories. Our aim is to encourage new ways of engaging with objects that sit at the intersection between art and medicine. The outcome, we hope, will be a broadened conception of how the visual and notions of visuality function or falter in medical practice past and present.  

All welcome but numbers are limited. Please register by emailing Keren Hammerschlag.

Please click here to download a PDF of the full program of events for the day.