Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy
Dates: 21 Mar - 16 Aug 2026
Venue: ArtScience Museum Level 4 ArtScience Cinema
For centuries the study of the human body has been a shared pursuit of art and science. From ancient Egyptian papyri documenting surgical practices to the anatomical theatres of the European Renaissance in the 1500s, the body became a site where knowledge came as a result of the human form being measured, explored, illustrated, carved and made visible through dissection.
Despite the long history of medical practices from other cultures, it was Western medicine that grew into a global authority, and alongside it the visual systems that expressed its ideas. Diagrams, charts, manuals, models, and drawings became more than instructional tools — they evolved into symbolic frameworks that defined notions of the functional and dysfunctional, perfect and flawed body.
Flesh and Bones examines these inherited binaries and brings other cultures, cosmologies, and ways of understanding human anatomy and the body into the conversation. In this exhibition, artists and scientists meet: some draw from longstanding traditions, while others reimagine the body through ritual, intuition, or emerging technologies. Together, they reveal anatomy not as a fixed truth, but as an evolving dialogue that spans time and place.
The exhibition exposes multiple stories of the body and medical practices — from the historical shaping of anatomical science to the ways bodies are envisioned and sketched, to the delicate structures that time and research have revealed within each of us. Each gallery offers a way of seeing that is present, poetic, and deeply human.
Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy features works from a project that originated at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles. This exhibition has been expanded and reimagined by ArtScience Museum, in conversation with Getty. For the original exhibition, presented at the Getty Research Institute Galleries 22 February - 10 July, 2022, see getty.edu/anatomy.
