Date: Monday, May 24
Time: 7 pm EDT

This lecture will take place virtually, via Zoom. Ticket sales will end at 5 pm EDT the day of the lecture. Attendees may request a video recording AFTER the lecture takes place by emailing proof of purchase to [email protected]. Video recordings are valid for 30 days after the date of the lecture.

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For thousands of years humans have been unable to resist opium’s narcotic allure. Wars have been fought over it. Countless lives have been ruined and lost. Narcotics have been influencing our health, our culture and our politics for centuries in ways both subtle and well-known.

But narcotics have another fascinating and esoteric story to tell. In the days before government regulation, pharmaceutical narcotics like opium, heroin and morphine played a common part in our everyday lives, but their presence wasn’t always acknowledged, their potency wasn’t always admitted, and their effects weren’t always understood. Evan Michelson will share some of the rarest pharmaceuticals in her personal collection and recount some of the lesser-known stories about opiates and the people who loved them, the people who exploited them, and the people who feared them.

Evan Michelson is an antiques dealer, collector, lecturer and award-winning curator. She was co-owner of New York City’s iconic Obscura Antiques and Oddities for 24 years, and co-star of the popular TV series “Oddities” which ran for five seasons on Discovery Science. Evan helped spearhead the reintroduction of cabinets of curiosity to the culture at large, and she has long been at the forefront of death culture and the melancholy sublime.

As Morbid Anatomy Scholar-in-Residence Evan has lectured widely on such subjects as the history of gothic culture and the enigmatic Saddest Object in the World. These days she is still on the road, accumulating esoteric objects and stories to tell.

Evan is currently the owner of Obscura West, located in Lambertville, NJ.

Image one: Albert de Matignon, Le vampire de l’opium, 1911

Image two: Antique Laudanum Label

Image three: Drug advertisement for a medicine that included heroin. Via Wellcome Collection

Image four: The Sick Child, J. Bond Francisco, 1893