Observing Life

Observing Life: Intersections Among Art, Medicine, and Health comprises photography and works on paper, dating from the 19^th century to the present. Drawn from the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum’s collection, these works address diverse ideas relating to the fields of medicine and health.  Featured artists include Bill Brandt, Manuel Carrillo, Marina Font, Quisqueya Henriquez, Eadweard Muybridge, and Ruth Orkin, among others. Many of the works in the exhibition have rarely been on view or are recent gifts to the collection of the Frost Art Museum.

Students enrolled in FIU’s Honors College course, History of Medicine through the Arts, taught by Dr. Amilcar Castellano-Sanchez, visited the Frost Art Museum over the course of this year to organize Observing Life. By analyzing other exhibitions on view and consulting materials in the museum’s print study room, these student curators learned about the process of creating an exhibition, from caring for objects to writing exhibition labels. Each student undertook research on a work of art featured in the exhibition and wrote object labels. As a group, they discussed the checklist and made final selections, in addition to consulting on the layout of the exhibition.

Image credit: Devorah Bowen, Soap Dish Teeth, from the series Natural Causes, 2006, Chromogenic print, 20 x 24 inches, Betty Laird Perry Purchase Award, FIU 2007.6.1