useum’s task of memory production,” he writes.
Nadja Durbach, “‘Skinless Wonders’: ‘Body Worlds’ and the Victorian Freak Show,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 69, no. 1 (January 2014): 38–67.
Although Body Worlds has sparked a range of responses, from outrage to fascination, Nadja Durbach argues that it has a direct line back to nineteenth-century “freak shows” in its attempt to merge education and entertainment. “They are both examples of the dynamic relationship between the popular and professional cultures of the body that we often erroneously think of as separate and discrete,” Durbach writes. In situating the work of Gunther von Hägens, the German anatomist who organized Body Worlds, in this context, she highlights the history of anatomical display as entertainment, whether in museums, curiosity cabinets, or individuals like Joseph Merrick exhibiting himself as the “Elephant Man” in the 1880s.