On December 5, the Royal Institute of Art and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts invite to the seminar “The Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Remains”, which is about anatomy, ethics and historiography. The seminar – which takes place at 13.00–17.00 in the auditorium of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts – focuses on questions of what a dignified treatment of human remains in a historical collection is and how we can understand the legacy of the history of anatomical teaching and its impact today. During the seminar, examples of research and handling of remains will be given.
From the Royal Institute of Art, Vice-Chancellor Sanne Kofod Olsen participates.
– I expect that the seminar will provide us with in-depth knowledge of this little-known history in a nuanced perspective, in relation to both human destiny, art education and past and present views on ethical issues, she says and continues:
– The Royal Institute of Art and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts are inextricably linked in a historical perspective. Together, we constitute and reflect a very large and significant part of Swedish art history. Continued collaboration with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts is very important to me, so that we together can serve and develop art and show its importance in society, past and present.
Anatomy was a central subject in art education for much of art history. At the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, anatomy was taught as early as in the 18th century and continued until 1973. The Academy’s collection includes human remains in the form of skeletal parts, which were previously used in the Academy’s anatomical teaching. The seminar is part of a long-term project in which the Academy is exploring the future of the remains and the story they tell, as well as highlighting current research and new issues for the future.
The seminar will feature, among others, the artist Simon Ferner, who graduated with a master’s degree in fine arts from the Royal Institute of Art in 2024. His graduation exhibition “Of Earth Thou Art Come” was about the human remains found at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, about people who have disappeared, and about violence and abuse in the name of science and art.