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Monday, April 19, 2027
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
PLEASE NOTE: Video playback of free events is only available to Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
In her new book, A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century, scholar Ellery Foutch explores the era’s desire to forestall the march of time and immortalize the fleeting moment through art and technology.
Analyzing Titian Peale’s butterfly illustrations and specimen boxes, Harvard’s collection of Glass Flowers crafted by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, and artistic representations of Eugen Sandow (aka the “Perfect Man”), Foutch highlights the paradoxical way in which these attempts at preservation ultimately sap the vitality from the organic processes they seek to arrest. In this illustrated talk, Foutch will unpack some of the deep cultural anxieties around decay and death, exploring our enduring fascination with the ephemeral.
Ellery Foutch is an Associate Professor in the American Studies Program at Middlebury College (Vermont), where she teaches classes on the art and material culture of the United States, as well as critical museum studies. She loves researching relics, natural history specimens, old museums, and quirk. Her new book, A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) explores period fascinations with perfection and its preservation across art, natural history, popular culture, and museum practice.
Monday, April 19, 2027
7pm ET (NYC time)
Free! RSVP with email at checkout
PLEASE NOTE: Video playback of free events is only available to Patreon members. Become a Member HERE.
Ticketholders: A Zoom invite is sent out two hours before the event to the email used at checkout. Please check your spam folder and if not received, email hello@morbidanatomy.org.
In her new book, A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century, scholar Ellery Foutch explores the era’s desire to forestall the march of time and immortalize the fleeting moment through art and technology.
Analyzing Titian Peale’s butterfly illustrations and specimen boxes, Harvard’s collection of Glass Flowers crafted by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, and artistic representations of Eugen Sandow (aka the “Perfect Man”), Foutch highlights the paradoxical way in which these attempts at preservation ultimately sap the vitality from the organic processes they seek to arrest. In this illustrated talk, Foutch will unpack some of the deep cultural anxieties around decay and death, exploring our enduring fascination with the ephemeral.
Ellery Foutch is an Associate Professor in the American Studies Program at Middlebury College (Vermont), where she teaches classes on the art and material culture of the United States, as well as critical museum studies. She loves researching relics, natural history specimens, old museums, and quirk. Her new book, A Perfectionist Impulse: The Art of Stopping Time in the Nineteenth Century (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) explores period fascinations with perfection and its preservation across art, natural history, popular culture, and museum practice.