Buy Taxidermy Mice And Exploded Skulls At The Morbid Anatomy Summer Flea
Ryan Matthew Cohn of the Science Channel’s ‘Oddities’ with his collection of osteological treasures.
The 24 hours before the impending doom of Monday morning are often reserved for a little R&R, but how about tossing in a few anthropomorphic taxidermy mice and exploded skulls into your Sunday Funday?
Spinning off their annual Holiday Fair in December, the Morbid Anatomy Museum’s first ever Summer Flea Market this Sunday promises the gamut of oddities: Elizabeth New’s medical photography-inspired quilts and home decor, Amber Jolliffe Maykut’s costume-clad taxidermy mice (pizza chef mouse, anyone?) and mounted butterflies, Mark Batelli’s wet specimens (brains, frogs, and gophers, how cute!), Wren Britton’s bone jewelry, Daisy Tainton’s entomological novelties, and Invisible Gallery’s antiques and esoterica. Basically, this is not your average Brooklyn flea.
“The typical person is not familiar with taxidermy or what any of this is, or why I’m putting clothes on a mouse,” says Maykut. “The Morbid Anatomy is a community of people where everyone just gets it.”
Maykut, 33, collected butterfly taxidermy in high school, and about four years ago the New Jersey native who lives in Williamsburg wanted to try her hands at creating her own dead art. At her first taxidermy class at Morbid Anatomy, Maykut made what would become her signature critter: a mouse fashioned as a business card-holder for her husband. Maykut’s other creations include a rodent dressed in a Blazers jersey, a vermin bride and groom, and she even designed a plastic flamingo-wielding mouse for John Waters.
One of Amber Jolliffe Maykut’s taxidermy mice
“The urban New York City taxidermy scene, it’s kind of the antithesis to hunting, like the classical, ‘Yeah, there’s my trophy that I killed and mounted and now it’s hanging over my fireplace,’” Maykut says. “It’s a little more whimsical than that.”
The macabre will be in full force at the flea—the event is in conjunction with Morbid Anatomy’s grand reopening on Friday night from a small event space to a 4,200 square foot museum, library, cafe, and lecture hall. Guests can peruse founder Joanna Ebenstein’s collection of rare art anatomy books and medicine anthologies, and explore the museum’s inaugural exhibit, “The Art of Mourning.”
Laetitia Barbier, Morbid Anatomy’s head librarian and event coordinator, says the weekend will be a “big celebration of bizarre objects and strange things.”
“When I arrived in New York, I used to have a compass in my pocket because that was the best way for me to find directions,” Barbier says, who is 29 and hails from France. “I used to blow people’s minds. There is something beautiful about old technologies and objects. Some of them are not supposed to be beautiful, but they became really artful.”
If You Go:
Date: Sunday, June 29th
Address: Morbid Anatomy Museum, 424A 3rd Avenue (Corner of 7th Street and 3rd Avenue), 1125 Brooklyn, NY
Time: 12 pm to 7 pm
Admission: Free
Photo from The Morbid Anatomy Museum
