Author Description

Perfect Vessels is the official illustrated catalog published on the occasion of David Orr's exhibition, Perfect Vessels, at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. David Orr is a visual artist based in Los Angeles. The images in the catalog are of skulls from the Mütter collection, photographed facing the camera, and made perfectly symmetrical by repeating one half of the visage. The catalog contains an introduction by David Orr, and an essay by Anna Dhody MFS (curator of the Mütter Museum and director of the Mütter Institute) and Robert D. Hicks, PhD (Director of the Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library, and the William Maul Measey Chair for the History of Medicine at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia).The publication includes 22 plates and 8 iluustrative plates (fine art references to memento mori, a poem by Lord Byron, a plate by Jan Stefan van Kalkar from Andreas Vesalius' 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem,' and illustrated notes on symmetry, perceptual imagery, and the use of skulls as symbols throughout history.