It’s great to read and see progress on funded projects where the Research Office supported the initial application. Here’s an update on Professor Michael Healey‘s successful AHRC Research Network, The Art of Reconstruction, via the Press Office:
Artwork produced by plastic surgeons in a series of pioneering workshops aimed at reviving the ancient relationship between medicine and the arts has gone on public display.
Consultant plastic surgeons from major UK hospitals are working alongside academics at the University of Lincoln to develop drawing and modelling skills normally the preserve of Fine Art students, which they can then apply to breast and facial reconstruction.
The objective is to instil in surgeons the same aesthetic principles which underpin artists’ understanding of the form of the human body.
Michael Healey, Professor of Art and Design at the University, said: “Throughout history, the disciplines of art and medicine have been closely entwined, from the times of Aristotle and Hippocrates in ancient Greece, through to Galen and later Leonardo da Vinci in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
“With the great advances in medicine in the last century, there seems to have been a divergence between the two.”The sessions have informed a major new research project, The Art of Reconstruction, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It will lead to journal articles, a dedicated website, videos, teaching materials and the establishment of an international network of surgeons, artists and academics with more training opportunities in the coming years.
Prof Healey, who is leading the research, added: “Through this research we hope to examine the intersection of art and science and evaluate whether art-based skills do have a valuable role to play within the operating theatre.”
A new exhibition about the project opened to the public at the University of Lincoln this week and will run until Thursday 22 September.
The exhibition, which features drawings, models and a film produced by the workshop surgeons, is open Monday to Friday from 10am-4pm on the ground floor exhibition gallery of the Architecture building on the University of Lincoln’s main Brayford Pool campus. Admission is free and members of the public are welcome to visit.
For more information and updates on the Art of Reconstruction project, visit: http://artofreconstruction.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/project-updates/
