The accumulation, measurement, application, recording, and teaching of medical knowledge fundamentally relies upon processes of sight. Showcasing the rich medical collections of the University and loans from medical and art collections around the country, the exhibition explores the ways in which the time-honored tradition of compiling medical data through direct observation is influenced by time, place, class, gender and other forces that shape human attitudes. Four thematic sections investigate how the process of seeing comes to connote knowing. In Seeing the Whole we see that various cultures propose different ways of conceptualizing the whole body and its place in the cosmos. Mind and Body Exposed explores how processes of visualization are used to make mental and physical states tangible.
Medical practice is a matter of public theatre in Spectacle .
Seeing the Unseen concentrates on apparent visual denial through such means as social rules of decorum, which often turn a woman s body into a taboo and thereby erotic secret. In any medical system of knowledge, what is not deemed visually significant can be as telling as what is made visible. Religion, morality, natural philosophy, notions of the cosmic order, ideas about what is normal, and familiar traditions of visual representation are some of the factors that have determined how bodies are seen in the realm of medicine. The Visual Arts of Medicine has been made possible by generous support from the University of Michigan Medical School on the occasion of its Sesquicentennial anniversary. Additional funding was provided by the Friends of the Museum of Art.