Patterns of Curation: Kahn’s Anatomical and Pathological Museum (British Association for Victorian Studies, BAVS 2019)

Presented by invitation at the British Association for Victorian Studies on special panel, 'Anatomy and Pathology in the Museum: Patterns of Visual and Literary Narrative'. Kahn’s Anatomical and Pathological Museum started life as a lauded scientific institution, but was beset by scandal mere years later, accused by the medical press of displaying inappropriately sexual models, exhibiting bodies not just to men but to women and children, and for selling quack remedies on its premises. Kahn’s popular institution exemplifies some of the problems encountered by anatomy museums in the nineteenth century, and their necessity to differentiate themselves from fairground attractions and titillation. This paper will demonstrate how, museums borrowed techniques from literature to navigate these issues of respectability, using texts to augment their objects and to place them within narratives, a technique that mirrored the patterns and series of curation and display. Popular literature, itself beleaguered by similar accusations of impropriety, borrowed the respectable techniques of the museum, reading bodies for signs of criminality, ordering objects to solve mysteries and restore respectability.