An Illustrated lecture and Museum Late Night with Colin Dickey, Morbid Anatomy Museum Managing Director and author of “Cranioklepty” and “Afterlives of the Saints”
Date: Wednesday, September 17th
Time: 8pm
Admission: $8 ( Tickets Here )

***Lecture includes admission to the Museum before and after the discussion.

In the Morbid Anatomy Museum’s inaugural exhibition, “The Art of Mourning,” the first image visitors are greeted by is a mirror framed in black fabric-a common mourning practice during the Victorian 19th century. Colin Dickey explores the symbolism and meaning of this practice-both the evolution of the custom and its roots in folklore and superstition. Draping mirrors and paintings with fabric, either to frame them or to cover them up entirely, long predates the nineteenth century, and was done as a means not only to protect and honor the dead, but also to protect the living from the dead. Reflecting a fundamental ambivalence that grieving family members often had towards the dead, the draped mirror reveals a rich and complex history of mourning practices and attitudes. Tracing its appearance in various cultures as well as in literature, Colin Dickey will offer a speculative history of a nearly extinct cultural belief.

Colin Dickey is the author of “Cranioklepty: Grave Robbing and the Search for Genius” and “Afterlives of the Saint”s and the co-editor (with Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Museum Creative Director) of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, Volume 1. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Cabinet, TriQuarterly, and The Santa Monica Review. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York where he acts as managing director of The Morbid Anatomy Museum.