Medical Historical Library
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Exhibitions
Current Exhibitions
Anatomy of a Collector: Gertrude van Wagenen (1893–1978)
On view in the Cushing Rotunda September 5, 2025 – January 21, 2026
Curated by L. R. Phillips, Ph.D., Curator for the Visual Arts
Who was Gertrude van Wagenen?
Those who knew her well called her “Dr. Van” or just “Van.” She was a pioneer in primate research and a leading expert in reproductive endocrinology. At Yale, she worked (unsalaried) as a “Research Assistant, with the rank of Instructor” and later as a “Lecturer” (1960) in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the School of Medicine. But these titles understate her achievements. By the end of her largely self-funded career, Van had established an internationally renowned Rhesus macaque breeding colony, published 124 scientific papers, co-authored two books for Yale Press (Embryology of the Ovary and Testis in 1965 and Postnatal Development of the Ovary in 1973), and developed the first proof-of-concept for a “morning-after” contraception pill.
Van was an extraordinary collector, both professionally and personally. Inside the lab, she collected data from 1,261 monkeys across fifteen generations. Outside of the lab, her collecting was equally impressive. Friends describe how she acquired “books, pictures, old silver, China, and other objects of art” with particular attention to “the rare, the curious, and the beautiful.” But Van was also a collector who ended her own collections. She terminated her primate colony in 1977 and her object collecting, by 1940.
Anatomy of a Collector underscores this perspective. Instead of celebrating Van as collector or exploring the breadth of her interests, it revisits the institutional choices that reshaped her once varied collection into a single story about anatomy. The exhibition presents “the rare, the curious, and the beautiful” works associated with her name not as a reflection of her full life and passions, but as anatomized parts. It showcases a legacy both constructed and constrained by its fragments.
Past Exhibitions
2025
A Cosmos of Similarity (March 10, 2025 – August 20, 2025)
Anatomy of a Collector: Gertrude van Wagenen (1893–1978) (September 5, 2025 – January 21, 2026)
2024
Data as Art: Celebrating a decade of the Bioinformatics Support Hub with the community (August 21, 2024 – February 2, 2025)
Mindscapes: Stories of Mental Health through Yale Collections (February 19th – August 16th, 2024)
2023
Yale School of Nursing Centennial (1923 – 2023) (August 18, 2023 – January 14, 2024)
Killer or Cure? Poison through the Centuries (March 22 – August 13, 2023)
The Medical Lens: Highlights from the Stanley B. Burns, MD, Historic Medical Photography Collection (January 27, 2023 – March 10, 2023)
2022
“Pasteur at 200” (August 24th, 2022 – January 20th, 2023)
100 Years of Pediatrics at Yale (April 30, 2022 – August 22, 2022)
Innovation & Evolution in Hip Replacement Surgery: Highlights from the Keggi–Rubin Hip Implant Collection at Yale University (January 28th – April 29th, 2022)
2020
Disability, Disability Activism, and the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (March 5 – August 17, 2020)
2019
Plastic Surgery at Yale: Surgical Expertise, Innovation, and History (October 30 2019 – February 24, 2020)
The Enduring Appeal of “The Doctor” (February 1 2019 – May 1, 2020)
The Hall-Benedict Drug Company Logbooks and Ledgers (August 30 – November 2019)
Grant Wood’s American Gothic Repurposed and Several Anti-Smoking Acquisitions (August 19 – January 2020)
The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine exhibition (May 30 – September 30, 2019)
2018
The Early Modern Pharmacy: Drugs, Recipes, and Apothecaries, 1500-1800 (April 2 – July 5, 2018)
A Man of Commanding Presence”: Dr. James Henry Etheridge Papers and Exhibition
Highlighting New Acquisitions in the Medical Historical Library (January 29 – March 28, 2018)
2017
“War is not healthy for children…” and Other Recent Acquisitions (October – December 20, 2017)
New Lives for Old Specimens (May 25 – November 3, 2017)
“Moral Judgment in Evaluating Disease: Some Pictures for Discussion” (April 28 – October 6, 2017)
“Yale Medicine Goes to War, 1917” (January 25 – May 12, 2017)
“Refugees, Immigrants, and Library Books for Soldiers: A Selection of World War l Posters from the Collections” (January 25 – April 25, 2017)
2016
“The AIDS Suite,” HIV-Positive Women in Prison and other works by artist/activist Sue Coe (September 15, 2016 – January 10, 2017)
The Medical Library at 75; The Life of the Medical Library; The Founding Collection of Prints and Drawings: Bequest of Clements C. Fry (April 6 – August 29, 2016)
Contra Cocaine and Other Works by Robbie Conal, Guerrilla Artist; Deaf: Cultures and Communication, 1600 to the Present; Selections from the Medical Instruments Collection (January 21 – April 1, 2016)
2015
“Historical Illustrations of Skin Disease: Selections from the New Sydenham Society Atlas 1860-1884” (September 17, 2015 – January 15, 2016)
“Discover the Beauty of Science” (October 17, 2015 – January 15, 2016)
Preserving Form, Preserving Content: Caring for Collections at the Medical Library; “Baldwin’s Patent Medicines”; 100 Years of Public Health at Yale (May 15 – September 9, 2015)
Teratology: The Science and History of Human Monstrosity; Prodigies and Marvels (January 22 – May 15, 2015)
2014
The Dangers of Underage Drinking and Other Historical Posters; Vesalius at 500; The Body as a Machine (September 22nd, 2014 – January 16th, 2015)
Selling Smoke: Tobacco Advertising and Anti-smoking Campaigns (May 15 – September 12, 2014)
“The Perfect Man” and other acquisitions; “The Morphine Addict by Eugene Grasset” and other select acquisitions; A Cure for What Ails You: Songs from the Library’s Sheet Music Collection (January 23 – May 2, 2014)
2013
Books of Secrets: Alchemy, Medicine, and Magic (November 18, 2013 – January 17, 2014)
Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière: The Physician and the Hysterical Women; “La Femme” (1886) by French artist Paul-Albert Besnard; Nursing at 90: A celebration of the Yale School of Nursing Alumni (September 16 – November 15, 2013)
“Eight Interesting Objects”; Selections from the New Global Health Collection (July 22 – September 12, 2013)
Unveiling Medicine’s Past: Medical Historical Collections Online (April – July 2013)
Portraits of Wounded Bodies: Photographs of Civil War Soldiers from Harewood Hospital, Washington, D.C., 1863-1866; War: Selections from the Collection of Prints and Drawings and the Historical Medical Poster Collection (January 16 – April 1, 2013)
2012
Medicine at Work: A Selection of Instruments and Materials from the Medical Historical Library; Nurses (September 22, 2012 – January 13, 2013)
“Family Doctor” by Grant Wood and Works by Other Mid 20th Century American Artists in Hallway; Food and Nutrition posters in Foyer; Maternity Care in Pictures: A Portfolio of 31 Teaching Charts Showing Safe Maternity Care, 1939 (June 22 – September 17, 2012)
Medicine in Shakespeare’s London (March 5 – June 18, 2012)
Online Exhibitions
- 100 Years of Women at Yale School of Medicine
- Arnold Carl Klebs, 1870-1943: Tuberculosis Specialist, Historian and Bibliophile, and a Founder of the Historical Library
- Deaf: Cultures and Communication, 1600 to the Present
- Epidemiology and Public Health at Yale: A Yale Tercentennial Exhibit
- Founders and Early Benefactors of the Historical Library
- Harvey Cushing: A Journey Through His Life
- Historical Illustrations of Skin Disease: Selections from the New Sydenham Society Atlas 1860-1884
- Innovation & Evolution in Hip Replacement Surgery: Highlights from the Keggi–Rubin Hip Implant Collection at Yale University
- Materiality, Fragility, and Loss in the Medical Archive
- Medical Astrology: Science, Art, and Influence in early-modern Europe
- Moral Judgement in Evaluating Disease: Some Pictures for Discussion
- Natural Interactions in the Book as Art and Making Knowledge
- New Haven’s Hospitals: An Online Exhibit (Being updated)
- Not a ‘Harem’ : Codding, Eisenhardt, Stanton, and the Lives and Legacies of Dr. Harvey Cushing’s Female Associates
- Selling Smoke: Tobacco Advertising and Anti-Smoking Campaigns
- The Medical Library at Yale
- The Yale School of Nursing: Better Health for All People
- Yale and Medicine, 1810-1910 (Being updated)
- Yale and Medicine, 1910-1960 (Being updated)