Assembling bodies

Assembling Bodies explores some of the different ways that bodies are imagined, understood and transformed in the arts, social and biomedical sciences. Marking the University’s 800th anniversary celebrations, the displays showcase Cambridge’s extraordinarily rich and diverse collections, complemented by external loans and exciting contemporary artworks. It brings together a range of remarkable and distinctive objects, including: the earliest stone tools used by human ancestors, classical sculptures, medieval manuscripts, Newton’s death mask, anatomical drawings, scientific instruments, the Crick and Watson model of the double helix, ancestral figures from the Pacific, South African body-maps made by the first women given anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS, and Kinetic art. Many of the displays highlight innovations arising from Cambridge-based research – from anthropological fieldwork, archaeological excavations and historical enquiries to developments in surgery, medical imaging, the discovery of the structure of DNA and the sequencing of the human genome. Numerous institutions lent to the exhibition including, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Museum of Classical Archaeology, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University Library, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (University of Cambridge), Jesus College, Murray Edwards College, St Johns College, and Trinity College, the Kinetica Museum, the Science Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and independent artists.

The production of Assembling Bodies has prompted many fruitful collaborations. The inclusion of several life-sized body maps, painted by members of the Bambanani Women’s Group in South Africa, generated a new collaborative project assisted by Dr Hayley MacGregor and Elizabeth Mills, to collect updated personal narratives regarding the impact of HIV on the lives of these women and their communities.

Assembling Bodies is a component of a five-year interdisciplinary research project “Changing Beliefs of the Human Body” funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Additional support was provided by the Arts Council of England (East), the Wellcome Trust, and the Crowther-Beynon Fund (MAA). It was curated and designed by Anita Herle, Mark Elliott and Rebecca Empson with the assistance of numerous people, including: members of the Leverhulme Body Project, doctoral and post-doctoral research associates, artists, museum staff and MPhil students taking the Museum Option in Social Anthropology and Archaeology.

Full details are given in the exhibition catalogue and on the website at http://maa.cam.ac.uk/assemblingbodies