NYAM’s Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health Launches New Festival on Saturday, October 5

The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) announces its first “Festival of Medical History and the Arts,” presented by NYAM’s Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health. The Center for History is NYAM's newest center, with a mission to preserve and promote the heritage of medicine and public health.

On Saturday, October 5 the Center will open its doors to the public for a day of free events from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. The Festival celebrates artists, scholars, writers and thinkers working at the intersections of history, medicine, art and the humanities.

With activities on three floors, a café and book stall, visitors will be able to drop by for an hour or stay for the day. The New York Academy of Medicine and friends will present a widely varied program, including an introduction to bibliophilic delights drawn from some of its more than 500,000 volumes, behind-the-scenes tours of its book and paper conservation laboratory, and other historical gems, plus a rarely screened film from the National Library of Medicine’s collection starring Gene Kelly as a sailor suffering combat fatigue.

The Center will also welcome two guest curators to its Festival of Medical History and Arts. Lawrence Weschler will present one of his well-known “Wonder Cabinets” and curate a day of presentations featuring Oliver Sacks, Bill Hayes, Riva Lehrer, Jane Gauntlett, a “dendrites versus galaxies” slapdown, gruesomely belabored royal deaths, and anatomy lessons from Rembrandt to Gray.  Brooklyn’s Morbid Anatomy will present anatomical drawing workshops, a medical wax moulage demonstration, and speakers including Carl Schoonover on pre-modern neuroscience, Daniel Margocsy on "artist of death" Frederik Ruysch, Mark Dery on his adventures in the NYAM library, and other explorations of the surprisingly fertile intersections of art and medicine.

All events will be free, except for the anatomical workshops and an “after-party” at the conclusion of the Festival. There, guests will be treated to an open bar, medically-inspired tunes by DJ Friese Undine, and cartoons from the National Library of Medicine’s collections spanning the silent era to the early 1960s curated by historian Michael Sappol.

For further details and a schedule of the day’s activities, visit http://www.nyam.org/events/2013/2013-10-05.html. Workshop and after-party places will be limited, so register now. Visit the Center’s blog at http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/ to learn more about its collections and public programming and sign up for updates. The Center is open to the public, by appointment, Tuesday through Friday.