On Dec. 5, students celebrated their new understanding of Anatomy in Art with a reception hosted by the Wright Museum. It’s the first time Werner’s class curated an exhibition at the museum. 

“The opportunity provided student-centered learning experiences based on their interests,” Werner says. “It also asked them to reflect on the portrayal of bodies and anatomy, which show up in spaces other than science.”

Since 2023, Professor Werner, current Parker Faculty Curator, has utilized both the Wright Museum and CELEB Maker Lab to enrich students’ coursework. The Parker Faculty Curator is selected from faculty applicants each year and content has ranged from sacred practices to chemistry. “The focus is storytelling through images,” says Joy Beckman, director of the Wright Museum. The museum was an invaluable instructional tool, giving students a chance to understand anatomy through a new lens. Students also designed anatomical models based on real CT scans at the Maker Lab.

Students attended lectures and presented research. Then, they demonstrated their expanded knowledge by assembling the exhibition, complete with gallery labels for the main themes: dramatic distortion, fragments, emotive bodies, and anatomical correctness. Students displayed a collage of their own sketches comprised of diagrams of parts of the human body that interested them most. 

“We studied anatomy in a different light,” says Corina Pope ’26, who took the course previously. The Wright Museum collection altered students’ perspectives because the images contrast textbooks and journals. Students learned that inaccuracies can be more representative of the differences in human appearance.

 “The Wright Museum provided time stamps throughout history about the understanding of the human body,” says Braden Hurst ’26. “Each piece had their own representation of the body whether it was meant to be grotesque, accurate, or convey an emotional response.” He adds,

“We had separate visions. Together, we organized something that was quite remarkable.”

The process embodied the overall vision written on the gallery label alongside the students’ sketches, “complex structures work together to create the whole.” As a result, they drew conclusions and images with innovative tools from previously unseen angles, giving them new perspectives to understand the world around them.