Elegant Anatomy PDF – The Eighteenth-Century Leiden Anatomical Collections
4.70 MB PDF
Preface
This book was originally conceived as a PhD thesis between 2008 and 2012 within the research programme Cultures of Collecting: The Leiden Anatomical Collections in Context at Leiden University and funded by nwo (the Dutch Research Council). Rina Knoeff, Robert Zwijnenberg, and Hieke Huistra were the other researchers on the project, and their ongoing support has been invaluable. In 2011, Simon Chaplin, director of the London Wellcome Library, gave Hieke and myself the opportunity to do research in London for three months. This period, with access to the marvellous collections at the Wellcome Library, the Hunterian Museum and the British Library, has been essential for the development of the book. My then home institution, the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (lucas, formerly luicd), Stichting Historia Medicinae, the Leids Universiteits Fonds and the Scottish Society for Art History generously funded this research trip.
Feedback from participants at international workshops and conferences in London, Lyon, Leiden, Zeist, Durham, Edinburgh, Zürich, Paris, Warwick, Amsterdam and Manchester on parts of the research underlying the current book have helped me greatly in testing and developing my ideas. In Leiden, there was also the ongoing support of our informal reading group—Frans van Lunteren, Martin Weiss and Eric Jorink regularly joined our small research group to discuss work in progress. Also very important for the development of my work were the international project workshop and conference we organized in Leiden in 2009 and 2012 respectively. The latter has formed an international network of scholars, curators, and artists working with anatomical collections, and has resulted in the Leiden Declaration on Human Anatomy.
The feedback of the organizers, my fellow PhD candidates and Dick Willems (professor of Medical Ethics at the Amsterdam Medical Centre/University of Amsterdam) during the meetings of the national wtmc research school has helped me to see my work in a broader perspective. Numerous people at universities, museums, libraries, archives, and research institutions have helped me find sources and access collections over the years. It is impossible to name everyone here, but special thanks are due to Andries van Dam, curator at Leiden University Anatomical Museum, for putting up with my endless inquiries, helping me access remote storage spaces, explaining the technicalities of preserving anatomical preparations, tolerating my presence in his not-so-big office and his sense of humour. Evan Ragland provided valuable feedback on the finished thesis when I was in the process of rewriting it as a book.
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