The Parlour of Dr Auzoux

Draped forms, anatomical shapes, and clusters of fungi disrupt the Victorian Parlour in an installation inspired by 19th-century anatomist Dr Louis Auzoux. Auzoux’s meticulously detailed papier-mâché models helped transform scientific education, combining accuracy with accessibility. His models can be taken apart into labelled sections for the study of human anatomy, animals, and plants.

Here, however, nature resists containment. Fungi sprout around the edges of the parlour, forming an organic network that unsettles the confidence and order of the Victorian age.

Bringing together original Auzoux models from the Whipple collection with a commission of new work by artist Anna Brownsted, this installation explores the material possibilities of paper through suspended sculpture, zoetrope animation, and a colony of papier-mâché mushrooms co-created with Whipple Scribble, the Museum’s creative drawing group. 

Open from 26 March in the Upper Gallery, this installation invites visitors to reconsider the boundaries between art, science and the natural world.