“[Art and Anatomy] invites the complex pleasures of finding beauty where many might prefer not to look at all.”
Catherine Belling
Art and Anatomy is an extracurricular seminar offered to students, staff, and faculty through the NYU Grossman School of Medicine (NYGSOM) Master Scholars Program in Humanistic Medicine (MSPHM). Started by Laura Ferguson and now led by artist-in-residence, Kriota Willberg, Art and Anatomy is a drawing class facilitated in the cadaver lab. The course challenges people to examine life and death through different lenses—including anatomical art, medical illustration, fine art, and medical imagery—and consider how these shape the way doctors and patients think about the body. All are welcome in the seminar, regardless of drawing and art experience.
Art and Anatomy: Drawings tells stories through 92 drawings made by students, staff, physicians, researchers, and other affiliates of NYUGSOM, as well as a foreword by Danielle Ofri, MD and and a curriculum guide to starting an anatomy drawing course. The book was edited by Laura Ferguson and Katie Grogan DMH MA. It is available for purchase through the University of California Medical Humanities Press.
“In Art & Anatomy, we see medical students not just memorizing anatomical structures, but really seeing the bodies that lie before them. This practice—slowing down, thinking deeply, looking closely—may be just as valuable to the education of these doctors-in-training as their burgeoning knowledge of anatomy will be. This is an important book that not only honors the beautiful artwork that the students produced, but which also should inspire other medical schools to pair creativity and analysis in the human anatomy lab.”
- Christine Montross MD, author of Body of Work; Associate Professor, Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University
“This book invites the complex pleasures of finding beauty where many might prefer not to look at all. The drawings are full of aesthetic wonder. As the record of a process, the book is even more extraordinary, for the class offers its participants a precious compound rare in medical training: unrushed observation, technical tenacity, and expressive freedom. And it ends with generous guidelines for introducing anatomy drawing at other schools: I hope many will follow this valuable advice.”
- Catherine Belling, PhD, Associate Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
“The Art & Anatomy drawings are engaging, expressive, imaginative, and sometimes very moving, like the sketch of a student’s hand holding the hand of a skeleton. Student comments speak of humility, intimacy, deep focus, and attention to detail. One writes that “creating art is a meditative experience” and looks forward to carrying mindfulness into his daily life. Indeed, Art & Anatomy is a project that brings eye, heart, and hand together in a process that fosters transformative experience.”
- Jack Coulehan, MD, MPH, poet and Senior Fellow, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics, Stony Brook University
Gallery: Selection of drawings from Art and Anatomy seminar
Babajide Oluwadare, Curving spinal column
Adolfo Arias, Brain "Interpretación del Cerebro"
Ginny Bao, Chest cavity
Yohei Rosen, Skull from below
Kyra Edson, Brain
Vianka DeJesus, Model holding spinal column
Julia Goldberg, Pelvis
Silvia Curado, Ribs with light shining through
Saima Usmani, Bride's foot henna
Michael Malone, Skeleton foot "Monument"
Samuel Cohen, Hand with tendons
Zoe Marinides, Skull (trois crayons technique)
Michael Sonson, Model studies
Mirhee Kim, Heart
Shimwoo Lee, Hand curled fingers
Michael Malone, Bisected head
Amy Ou, Hand
Additional resources
A wonderful short 5-minute film directed by Emon Hassan for Narrative.ly: An introspective artist teaches med students and faculty to put down their scalpels and discover beauty in boxes of bones and body parts.