REVIEW: Anatomy/Academy @ PAFA

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REVIEW: Anatomy/Academy @ PAFA

POSTED: Thursday, January 27, 2011, 4:00 PM

Filed Under: Arts | Critical Mass | Events | Arts Events | Museum Visual Art

Three years ago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art teamed up with thousands of donors to buy Thomas Eakins' masterpiece The Gross Clinic (right), thus ensuring the painting would stay in our fair city. As the work returns to PAFA,

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an entire exhibit is springing up around it. Opening Saturday, Anatomy/Academy celebrates the city's history at the intersection of arts and sciences. Philly has more than its share of medical, artistic, and academic institutions (it's been called the city of "meds and eds"), and it's been the site of landmark work to improve our understanding of the human body. Displaying works by the likes of Charles Willson Peale, John Sloan, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as medical artifacts, writings, and photographs, the exhibit tells the story of learning and the body in Philadelphia, focusing on the 19th and early 20th centuries. You'll see, for example, the scalpel of Dr. Samuel Gross near the Eakins painting that bears his name; William Rush's 19th-century anatomical models; and Caspar Wistar's dissection kit. In its time, many considered The Gross Clinic's graphic depiction of surgery, well, gross. Today, according to PAFA, it's considered "the preeminent 19th century American realist painting." The exhibit runs until Apr. 17 and will be accompanied by a number of programs reflecting on arts and sciences in Philadelphia past and present. Jan. 29-Apr. 17, $12-$15, Samuel M. V. Hamilton Building, 128 N. Broad Street.

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