This thesis analyses the representation of so-called human curiosities in recent visual art, by drawing a connection to historical practices of exhibiting 'monstrous' and deformed bodies within institutions such as freak shows, anatomical collections and medical museums. The last two decades have witnessed a surge of scholarly interest in the histories of these institutions, particularly through the work of Robert Bogdan, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Rachel Adams, Richard Sandell and Samuel J.M.M Alberti, whose research can be situated in interdisciplinary humanities fields such as disability studies, museology, history of science and literary and visual studies. Concurrently, a remarkable number of contemporary artists have also turned to the history and imagery of these spaces to explore the politics of display in exhibitions of non-normative bodies. This study addresses the critical gap between these two parallel domains of inquiry, drawing upon recent studies concerning historical exhibitions of monstrous bodies to analyse how contemporary artists have simultaneously confronted and extended these traditions through their artworks. In order to show that the very notion of 'monstrous bodies' is inextricably bound up in the curious display practices that frame them, I analyse the representation of human curiosities in the work of Zoe Leonard, Joanna Ebenstein, Diane Arbus, Mat Fraser, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Marc Quinn and John Isaacs. Each chapter examines a distinct institutional context – the anatomical collection, the freak show, the art gallery, and the contemporary medical museum – to investigate how these artists challenge the meanings conferred upon extraordinary bodies within each space, bestowing new significance upon these forms within the context of their various art practices. I argue that, by doing so, artists themselves can take on roles like curious collectors, freak show talkers and teratologists, revealing the potential for 'art' to act as yet another display framework that imposes a particular set of meanings onto anomalous bodies.

This thesis examines the possibilities of the tattoo as a collectible. Specifically, three different modes of collecting and displaying tattoos; as a living museum on the body of the tattooed subject, as a skin specimen separated from the body and displayed in a variety of museum settings and, finally, as an image abstracted from the body in the form of photographs of tattooed sitters. Implicit in this journey from body art to artifact is a consideration of the changing meaning and significance of tattoos in the evolving discourse of visual culture. Once regarded as markers of social deviance - as symbols of exclusion or marginalization - tattoos have become a much more popular and widely accepted form of body art - signs of community, affinity and inclusion. The growing popularity of tattoos has also led to a reconsideration of their status as an art form, an elevation of what was once considered a 'low art' process to the realm of high art. This shift has only recently led to an increase in scholarship about tattoos within the discourses of both art history and visual culture. In this thesis I examine this new scholarship about tattoos in visual culture, and then go one step further by considering tattoos as visual objects within the culture of collecting. Specifically, I examine tattoos as collectible 'souvenirs', as specimens and, when reproduced as photographs, as socially resonant signs of identity and meaning. These case studies examine tattoo art from various perspectives. Primarily, as art collected on the body, but also as imagery existing separate from a physical form, just like the majority of collected artwork.

While there is an extensive and distinguished body of scholarship exploring the intersection of Thomas Eakins and medical science, his art has not been contextualized critically in relation to American Civil War medicine or the institutional practices of the Army Medical Museum. Within the context of Civil War medicine, Eakins's heroic portraits of surgeons and scientists become more than a reflection of his personal admiration of science and medicine, more than a reflection of the growing professionalization of the medical community in the United States, but implicates him in the narrative of offsetting the horrors wrought by the Civil War by actively enshrining the professionalization of medicine and claims to the advancement of body-based research. Furthermore, while there is an extensive and distinguished body of scholarship exploring the intersection of Thomas Eakins and the body from the perspective of race, gender, and sexuality, the consideration of his work from the perspective of critical disability theory has not been contemplated. Civil War medicine is critical to the art of Thomas Eakins because it demystifies his fascination with the human body, and engages him in the aesthetic reconstruction of disabled veterans and the cultural privileging of the healthy body during and after the American Civil War. By historicizing the science and medical practices that Eakins used and by critically examining his depictions of the body through the lens of disability studies, my thesis raises new critical questions about two of the most researched and theorized topics in Eakins scholarship: medicine and the body. / Art History