Wednesday 27 August 2014

first mention in press yesterday of forthcoming War Art & Surgery exhibition 
Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England, 
which opens on October 14th 2014 
in
London Evening Standard


The exhibition at the Hunterian is not just historical. It features all of Tonks’s surviving 72 pastel portraits, some of which show patients both before and after surgery, plus instruments, a wax demonstration bust and a plaster life mask of Private Charles Deeks showing the deep cavity gouged between his brows by a shell shard on the first day of the Somme. This material is paired with works by contemporary war artist Julia Midgley depicting the injuries from recent conflicts that are treated by the surgeons at Headley Court — limbs blown off by IEDs rather than faces torn up by shrapnel.
War, Art and Surgery is at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons, WC2  (020 7405 3474; rcseng.ac.uk), Oct 14 to Feb 14, 2015.