‘Skin’ invited visitors to re-evaluate the largest and probably most overlooked human organ and consider its changing significance – from anatomical analysis during the 16th century to contemporary artistic exploration.
Skin exhibition, Dave Sayer. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The exhibition took a philosophical approach to its subject across four themes – Objects, Marks, Impressions and Afterlives – first looking at the skin as frontier between the inside and outside of the body. It moved on to explore skin as a living document: tattoos, scars, wrinkles and various pathologies all tell the story of our life so far. Finally, skin was considered as an organ sensitive to touch and delicate threshold between life and death.