Soul anatomy: when medicine meets art

This autumn Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) Institute of the History of Medicine in cooperation with Pauls Stradiņš Museum for History of Medicine and Janis Rozentals Riga Art High School are implementing an interdisciplinary educational project "Soul Anatomy".

Soul anatomy is a unique experience bringing together RSU first year international medicine students and the prospective artists from Janis Rozentals Riga Art High School to search for points of intersection of medicine and art through exploration of the historical relationship between medicine and art and the methods applied by the contemporary medical practitioners for studying and shaping the "medical portrait" of an individual as opposed to the approaches used by artists to submerge in exploring the personality of an individual for discovering specific traits for possibly precise portrait drawing.

Project participants were given the opportunity to look at the human anatomy from another perspective – medical students participated in the anatomy class at the art school, learning the aspects of the composition of the human body of interest for artists, whereas the prospective artists, instead, had the chance to be present at medicine and life sciences history workshops.

In the light of the fact that the study process of the prospective doctors and artists encompasses acquisition of similar skills, the scope of the project was to let medical students contemplate on their perception of the chosen profession while the prospective artists were focusing hard to catch their "soul anatomy" and reproduce on canvas.

The project is currently entering its final stage and the closing event – the opening of the exhibition of the portraits of eighteen medical students, which is the outcome of the mutual cooperation of art and medical students, will take place on 27 November at Pauls Stradiņš Museum for History of Medicine.

Project cooperation partners: prof. Juris Salaks (RSU Institute of the History of Medicine); Ilze Sirmā (Pauls Stradiņš Museum for History of Medicine); Ieva Taranda (Janis Rozentals Riga Art High School).