Vincent Price was born 100 years ago tonight--May 27th--as the Great Dreamland Fire blazed, ultimately to consume a never-to-be-rebuilt Dreamland amusement park at Coney Island. Bizarre coincidence? Cosmic reincarnation?

Join us tonight as we try to figure it out with Hendrick's drinks bearing his name, theatrical performances, and the unveiling of a new 19th Century-style disaster spectacle!

Full details follow; Very much hope to see you there.

Unveiling of a brand new 19th Century style disaster amusement! Free Hendrick's Gin! Disaster tunes of yester-year! Lord Whimsy! Stars of TV's Oddities! Vintage Coney Island films curated by Zoe Beloff! Rare appearance of the old Dreamland Bell!

All this and more await you next Friday at our Centennial Celebration of the Great Dreamland Fire. Please, come celebrate the end of an era with us!

Full invite below. Hope very much to see you there!!!

Centennial Celebration of the Great Dreamland Fire Featuring the Opening of Coney Island’s Newest Cosmorama
Presented by The Coney Island Museum, The Morbid Anatomy Library, and Atlas Obscura
Date: Friday May 27, 2011
Time: 7:00 PM
Admission: $25 (Tickets at the door, or purchase here)
Location: The Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn (map here)

Next Friday, May 27th, you are cordially invited to a party commemorating the "awful splendor" of The great Dreamland fire of May 27, 1911, the most devastating disaster to hit New York City in the pre-9-11 era, a fire which devastated a never-to-be-rebuilt-Dreamland 100 years ago on this day.

This event will mark the premiere of the Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire, a 360 degree immersive cosmorama telling the story of the great fire in pictures, sound, and light. Based on Coney Island’s great immersive disaster spectacles, the cosmorama is the product of months of labor, thousands of dollars, and the expertise of artists and artisans from the Metropolitan Opera, and uses real boards from the original Coney Island boardwalk in its construction.

The party will also feature a complementary gin bar with custom cocktails, disaster tunes of yester-year curated by The Foppinton Brothers, vintage Coney Island films, a rare appearance of the old Dreamland Bell, celebrity appearances, anatomical give-aways, myriad performances, and much more!

Full line-up:

• Complimentary Gin Bar (!!!) courtesy of Hendrick’s Gin and Atlas Obscura
• Our incomparable host, Lord Whimsy, author of The Affected Provincial’s Companion, Volume 1
• Special guest appearance by Ryan Matthew, Evan Michelson and Mike Zohn of TV’s “Oddities”
• A rare appearance of the long submerged bell of the Dreamland Pier, 100 years after its climactic plunge into the depths of the cold Atlantic
• Puppet Vaudeville from Jonny Clockworks and "The Cosmic Bicycle" of "The ClockWorks Puppet Theatre"
• Vintage Coney Island Films from the collection of artist Zoe Beloff
• Giveaways of anatomical puzzle and other sundries complements of Kikkerland Design
• Custom Cocktails and Early 20th Century disaster tunes complements of The Foppinton Brothers
• The Accordion stylings of Matt Dallow
• “Reconstruction,” a performance featuring contortionist Jonathan Nosan and with musical accompaniment by Gordon Beeferman, Composer/Pianist
• Sword Swallowing, burlesque and Coney Island entertainment
• 19th Century waxworks, freak animals, and a real shrunken head
• Unlimited access all night long to the newly unveiled Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire
• And, of course, More!

Tickets are available by clicking here or purchasing at the door. See you there!

Jim Edmonson of the Dittrick Museum has just written a wonderful post on his museum blog about a rare book from the 1830s entitled Le Livre Sans Titre (The Book without a Title). This beautifully illustrated tome is a graphic warning against the perils of self-abuse, or onanism, via the tale of a healthy and handsome young man's slow decline--symptom by terrifying symptom!--under the influence of the deadly vice.

Mr. Edmonson has generously scanned the lovely hand-colored images and translated the captions from French to English, creating a kind of inadvertent 1830s graphic novel; I have republished the highlights here as a warning to young men, lest you trace this young and comely man's tragic fall and ultimate demise:

He was young, handsome; his mother's fond hope

He corrupted himself! ... soon he bore the grief of his error, old before his time... his back hunches...

See his eyes once so pure, so brilliant; they are extinguished! a fiery band envelops them

Hideous dreams disturb his slumber... he cannot sleep...

His chest burns... he spits up blood...

His hair, once so lovely, falls as if from old age; his scalp grows bald before his age....

He hungers; he wants to satiate his appetite; food won't stay down in his stomach...

His chest collapses... he vomits blood...

Pustules cover his entire body... He is terrible to behold!

A slow fever consumes him, he declines; all of his body burns up..

His entire body stiffens!... his limbs stop moving...

He is delirious; he stiffens against death; death gains strength.

At the age of 17, he expires, and in horrible torment!

As mentioned above, this is an excerpt from a larger piece; you can read the entire story on The Dittrick Museum Blog by clicking here. And click on images to see much larger, more detailed images.

Thanks very much to Jim Edmonson for making this available for public consumption!

Tonight at Observatory! Hope very much to see you there!

A Virtual Tour of the Anatomical Collections of the University of Groningen
An illustrated lecture with Dr. Rolf ter Sluis, Curator and Director of the Groningen University Museum
Date: TONIGHT May 24th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

Tonight, join Dr. Rolf ter Sluis--curator and director of the Netherlands based Groningen University Museum--for a virtual tour of the museum's historic and amazing anatomy and pathology collections. The majority of the collection consists of preparations in spirit, but also includes dry preparations where the veins have been injected with coloured wax, wax and Papier-mâché models, skeletons and skulls, preserved tattooed skin, and much more.

The core of the museum collection is drawn from the private collections of two important 18th century medical scientists, Petrus Camper and Pieter de Riemer. The collection of Camper, professor of medicine from 1763 - 1774, and his son Adriaan Gilles Camper consisted of anatomical, comparing anatomical and biological preparations, fossils, minerals and instruments. The collection was donated to the museum after Camper’s death in 1820 and there are still around 200 of his preparations in the museum collection. Another important part is the collection of the medical scientist Pieter de Riemer (1769 - 1831). He was especially interested in anatomy, surgery and obstetrics. The De Riemer collection, containing more than 900 preparations, came into the hands of the university in 1831.

Dr. Rolf ter Sluis is the Curator and Director of the Groningen University Museum. He also studied history and worked for 25 years as a registered nurse in Anaesthetics before taking on his role as curator and director of the collection.

You can find out more about this event on the Observatory website by clicking here; you can access these event on Facebook here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

If the Founding Fathers wanted to visit Body Worlds they could have. Or pretty darn close, at least - they just needed to visit one of the many European cabinets of anatomical curiosities, to see the work of anatomists like Honore Fragonard.

Fragonard's eighteenth-century ecorches were the clear precursors to Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds" exhibits: preserved, injected, partially dissected bodies in lifelike, dramatic poses, with ragged strips of muscle draped like primitive clothing over exposed vessels and nerves. The effect is eerie - like a Vesalius illustration sprung to (half-)life... --Bioephemera, "If the Founding Fathers wanted to visit Body Worlds..."

Much has been said--and rightfully!--about the "uncanny similarity" (as one might charitably say) between the anatomical works of Body Worlds' impresario Gunther von Hagens and the 18th Century allegorical anatomical ecorchés of Honoré Fragonard, cousin of well-known rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Bioephemera says it very very well today--as quoted above--and follows with a really nice, extensive review of the new, wonderful, lavishly illustrated Blast Books publication Fragonard Museum: The Ecorches.

To read the entire post on the Bioephemera website--very much recommended!--click here. To order a copy of the book for your very own--also highly recommended!--click here.

The specimens you see above -- and more! -- are housed in the amazing Le Musée de l’Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort (née Musée Fragonard) right outside of Paris; to find out more about that museum, click here. Images as credited; to see more images from the Musée, click here. To visit the museum website, click here.

Image credits and captions:

• Top image: Fragonard's Horseman, found here.
• Second image: Fragonard's man with the mandible, inspired by Samson smiting the Philistines with an ass's jaw, found here.

All other images from the Bioephemera post. Captions, top to bottom:

• Nilgai/Doe of the Indies
• Human Bust
• Human Bust
• Installation view of The Musee Fragonard

To celebrate (or mourn, depending on your point of view) yesterday's anti-climactic non-rapture, Morbid Anatomy has put together a very exciting week of illustrated lectures to take place at Brooklyn's Observatory! On Tuesday, join Dr. Rolf ter Sluis for a virtual tour of the underknown European anatomical collection he curates; on Thursday, author Jay Kirk will tell us the story of Carl Akeley, that "brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed African Hall we visit today at New York's Museum of Natural History;" and on Saturday, practicing medical illustrator Shelley Wall will discuss "how sexual anatomy, gendered bodies, and dimorphic sex have been represented in the visual discourse of medicine."

Heady stuff! Full details for all events follow; hope very much to see you there!

A Virtual Tour of the Anatomical Collections of the University of Groningen
An illustrated lecture with Dr. Rolf ter Sluis, Curator and Director of the Groningen University Museum
Date: This Tuesday, May 24th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

Tonight, join Dr. Rolf ter Sluis--curator and director of the Netherlands based Groningen University Museum--for a virtual tour of the museum's historic and amazing anatomy and pathology collections. The majority of the collection consists of preparations in spirit, but also includes dry preparations where the veins have been injected with coloured wax, wax and Papier-mâché models, skeletons and skulls, preserved tattooed skin, and much more.

The core of the museum collection is drawn from the private collections of two important 18th century medical scientists, Petrus Camper and Pieter de Riemer. The collection of Camper, professor of medicine from 1763 - 1774, and his son Adriaan Gilles Camper consisted of anatomical, comparing anatomical and biological preparations, fossils, minerals and instruments. The collection was donated to the museum after Camper’s death in 1820 and there are still around 200 of his preparations in the museum collection. Another important part is the collection of the medical scientist Pieter de Riemer (1769 - 1831). He was especially interested in anatomy, surgery and obstetrics. The De Riemer collection, containing more than 900 preparations, came into the hands of the university in 1831.

Dr. Rolf ter Sluis is the Curator and Director of the Groningen University Museum. He also studied history and worked for 25 years as a registered nurse in Anaesthetics before taking on his role as curator and director of the collection.

Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals
An illustrated lecture and book signing with author Jay Kirk
Date: This Thursday, May 26th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
***Books will be available for sale and signing

During the golden age of safaris in the early twentieth century, one man set out to preserve Africa's great beasts. In his new book Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Great Animals, Jay Kirk details the life and adventures of naturalist and taxidermist Carl Akeley, the brooding genius who revolutionized taxidermy and created the famed African Hall we visit today at New York's Museum of Natural History. The Gilded Age was drawing to a close, and with it came the realization that men may have hunted certain species into oblivion. Renowned taxidermist Carl Akeley joined the hunters rushing to Africa, where he risked death time and again as he stalked animals for his dioramas and hobnobbed with outsized personalities of the era such as Theodore Roosevelt and P. T. Barnum. In a tale of art, science, courage, and romance, Jay Kirk resurrects a legend and illuminates a fateful turning point when Americans had to decide whether to save nature, to destroy it, or to just stare at it under glass.

Tonight, join author Jay Kirk for an illustrated lecture based on his new book Kingdom Under Glass. Books will be available for sale and signing after the event.

Jay Kirk's nonfiction has been published in Harper's, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and The Nation. His work has been anthologized in Best American Crime Writing 2003 and 2004, and Best American Travel Writing 2009 (edited by Simon Winchester). He is a recipient of a 2005 Pew Fellowship in the Arts and is a MacDowell Fellow. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Pub(l)ic Identities: Reading Medical Representations of Sex
An illustrated lecture with medical artist Shelley Wall
Date: This Saturday, May 28th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

"It's a girl!" "It's a boy!"... The genitals, those body parts conventionally expected to remain most hidden, are also the first and most powerful shapers of our public identity. In this illustrated talk, medical artist Shelley Wall considers how sexual anatomy, gendered bodies, and dimorphic sex have been represented in the visual discourse of medicine. From early anatomical atlases through to present-day clinical illustrations and the Visible Human datasets, medical imagery has influenced ideas about sexual identity and what it means to be "normal".

Shelley Wall is a medical artist and professor in the Biomedical Communications graduate program, University of Toronto. Her research interests include biomedical representations of sex and gender, conventions in visualizing the embryology of sexual differentiation and intersex conditions, contemporary and historical visual practices in relation to women's health, and medical humanities.

You can fin
d out more about these events on the Observatory website by clicking here; you can access these events on Facebook here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.