@jackgann.bsky.social
Historian and curator. Museums, Victorians, and medicine. Currently curator at Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds
A stack of steaming hot chocolate chip pancakes sitting on a plate that says "Pancakes?"
Pancake Day
17.02.2026 18:48 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0“There are now more places to sell plasma than there are Costco stores [in the US] — and more are popping up in solidly middle-class neighborhoods”
16.02.2026 04:11 — 👍 617 🔁 241 💬 9 📌 19
A black card into which an anatomical heart illustration has been scratched, revealing flourescent rainbow colours
Anyone looking to make their own Sougy-esque anatomical images, scratch art crafts are a part of our half term offer.
thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/februa...
The poster for the Thackray Museum of Medicine's Beneath the Sheets exhibition, featuring the previous image of the man with his wrists bound above his head, on a lurid pink poster.
A baroque painting of Saint Sebastian. His arms are above his head, wrists bound in a very similar way to the anatomic illustration.
The main Catholic art reference point here, though, appears to be Guido Reni's infamously homoerotic depiction of the martyrdom of St Sebastian. No wonder Maclise's work has been seen as a "lost archive of queer expression".
14.02.2026 22:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A nineteenth-century illustration of a man with his chest open to reveal his internal organs. His hands are bound above his head. The picture is black and white, except the heart, which is coloured pink.
1850s - Couldn't not include the poster boy for our new exhibition, taken from Joseph Maclise's Surgical Anatomy. The pink heart really pops out like Christ's sacred heart in this monochrome image of the organs of the abdomen and thorax.
14.02.2026 22:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A wallchart showing a diagram of the of the circulatory system.
1940s - French-Canadian artist Pauline M. Lariviere broke with realist tradition to take influence from abstracts and cubism. She was less concerned with depicting organs as they appear in reality than with using colour, scale, and alternative angles to emphasise important details.
14.02.2026 22:19 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
An anatomical chart of the nervous system, showing stylised organs in white lineart on a black background, and the nerves themselves as colourful abstract lines.
Sougy's wallcharts, intended for classrooms and lecture theatres, are characterised by stark black backgrounds and vibrant, almost flourescent, colourful linework, making them feel years ahead of their time.
14.02.2026 22:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
1950s - Paul Sougy was a French curator at a natural history museum who was commissioned to draw a series of illustrations of the collections of 19th century naturalist and anatomist Louis Thomas Jérôme Auzoux (who made incredible papier-mâché models of organs and animals).
14.02.2026 22:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A simplified diagram of the heart in red and blue on a black background.
As it's Valentine's Day: my favourite anatomical illustrations of hearts from the museum collection...
14.02.2026 22:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Leeds back-to-back housing, Cross Oswald St, 1970, photo by Nick Hedges.
10.02.2026 08:21 — 👍 65 🔁 7 💬 7 📌 0
When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured”
www.reuters.com/investigatio...
A simple but expressive wood carved owl, painted black with yellow eyes and bold red plumicorns. https://collections.thackraymuseum.co.uk/object-717-010
As people are posting their #SuperbOwl examples and the owl is the symbol of our fair city, here's an owl inkwell from the Thackray Museum collection.
This one was hand carved by a patient at Meanwood Park Hospital
Come visit any time between now and June.
thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/bts/
A photo of two banners with a pink-white colour gradient hanging in front of a white wall. It is the entrance to a museum exhibition gallery. The larger banner has a quote from 18th century anatomical illustrator Arnauld Eloi Gautier d'Agoty. It says "For men to be instructed, they must be seduced by aesthetics, but how can anyone render the image of death agreeable." It is superimposed over an 18th century illustration of the muscles of the back, featuring a pronounced and well-defined gluteus maxmimus. The smaller banner is titled "Look Beneath" and contains smaller text introducing the exhibition.
Opening today at Thackray Museum of Medicine!
Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art & Power
A brand new exhibition about bodies and the people who reveal them.
'Spanning five centuries, the deceased in the anatomical prints currently on show in the exhibition Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art and Power, at Thackray Museum of Medicine...none of them consented to images of their unclothed, mutilated bodies being bound up in a book or displayed on a wall.'
05.02.2026 10:32 — 👍 10 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1
Come and see the exhibition from Saturday.
thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/bts/
Enjoyed talking to BBC Culture about bodies, consent, sensuality, and how there's no such thing as objective illustrations of human anatomy.
www.bbc.co.uk/culture/arti...
From London to Delhi, but especially Leeds.
Nice to be featured in February's most anticipated new exhibitions worldwide.
No, I'm wrong to say 1975. That's me just glancing at the system number in the library catalogue not the date! (You can tell I'm more used to reading object records than library ones).
We do have it as 50s in the catalogue, but there's no publication date in it.
A 1970s illustration of the design of a hospital ward in mint green.
A photograph of the installation SICK: (a note from 40 Sandilands Road and other stories) by the artist Sarah Roberts. An imaginative and evocative recreation of a healthcare space, feeling like part of an abstract theatre set, it is painted in the same mint green as the previous picture
It was quite influential on the colour palette of this art installation - library.leeds.ac.uk/events/event... - Sarah did some of her research for the piece in our library.
30.01.2026 10:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0It's a book of colour theory in the design of public buildings, produced by the paint manufacturer Jenson & Nicholson in 1975.
"The Function of Colour in Factories, Schools and Hospitals"
collections.thackraymuseum.co.uk/b166292
In a sensory themed morning, Victoria will be joined by friend of the museum's smellscape @claireturner.bsky.social, who will be taking a sidestep from making our galleries smell like wee and poo to sniff out the stench of cancer.
Should be a really interesting pair of lectures.
Next Saturday, our Insights lecture series will feature @victoriabates.bsky.social - author of Feeling Blue: Colour and the Modern British Hospital - who will be talking about colour and healthcare.
thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/thackr...
An illustration of the design of a children's ward in a hospital. The lines are clean and neat. The walls are pale blue, accented with darker blue, the beds and furniture are grey with candy pink coverings. It is taken from "The Function of Colour in Factories, Schools and Hospitals" (1975) in the collection of Thackray Museum of Medicine - https://collections.thackraymuseum.co.uk/b166292
Children's hospitals should be painted blue and candy pink, according to this 1970s book of colour theory.
"Such a scheme is quiet enough for a sick room, but its tiny touches of clear colour would help to hold a convalescing child's interest, and counteract boredom."
Why did magic mushrooms evolve? We may finally have the answer www.newscientist.com/article/2512...
23.01.2026 14:34 — 👍 12 🔁 5 💬 2 📌 0
The outside wall of an upcoming exhibition at Thackray Museum of Medicine, covered in a graphic with a blushing pink ombre-style gradient. The image shows a man with his chest opened to reveal his internal organs. The relaxed glow of his face appears more post coital than post mortem, his bound wrists more bondage than dissecting table. The exhibition title reads "Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art & Power".
"You do that picture of the relative position of the superficial organs of the thorax and abdomen, Joe?"
"Sure did boss, real fuckin sexy just like you asked."
"what"
A painting of a soldier with brown hair. He is standing up and is shirtless and is resting his right hand on his head. There are two gunshot wounds visible on his torso.
The Battle of Corunna took place #OTD in 1809. Civilian surgeon Charles Bell volunteered to treat wounded soldiers returning to Britain. He later created these artworks which he used for teaching. Some of these artworks can be seen in our Wohl Pathology Museum.
16.01.2026 12:02 — 👍 47 🔁 14 💬 1 📌 2
A photo of my dad and daughter playing together with a spinning box interactive in a brightly coloured museum exhibition. All around them are examples of imaginative or futuristic pills and medication. They are smelling different 'flavours' to choose which they would want to coat their imaginary pill.
It makes me so sad that my dad will never see so many of my exhibitions. But happy that the last one he ever did was on patient healthcare choices, the subject of much of his life's work. My very small attempt to follow his footsteps and pass his legacy on.
16.01.2026 11:21 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
2024's You Choose was one of my favourite exhibitions to work on. It was big, ambitious and weird. And - as @claireturner.bsky.social and I discuss here - gave us more insight into our visitors' preoccupations, interests and worries than we've ever had before.
thepolyphony.org/2026/01/12/y...
Claire Turner and Jack Gann explore questions of personalised medicine, digital technologies, and prevalent health concerns in the exhibition You Choose.
thepolyphony.org/2026/01/12/y...
