The Marvin Samson Center for the History of Pharmacy has opened a new exhibition from the University collections, “SECUNDUM ARTEM: Selected works of art and design from the University collections.”
A Latin phrase literally meaning “according to the art or practice,” secundum artem often refers to doing something in the accepted manner of a skill or trade. In medicine, it can mean “employing skill and judgment” or “to make favorably with skill;” in pharmacy, preparations made secundum artem ensure they are pure and unadulterated, but the phrase also encompasses the apothecary’s obligation to provide good advice to customers who request over the counter drugs.
Through the display of over 100 objects related to the history of pharmacy and science, this exhibition explores the products of various skilled scientists, artists, craftsmen, and designers active primarily in Europe and the United States during the last 300 years.
What links these objects is that they were manufactured according to the specific art or practice, or secundum artem, of their makers. The wide media – prints, photographs, manuscripts, paintings, ceramics, glass, wood, and metal – and categories of objects – instruments, advertising and packaging, natural science, etc. – attest to the broad holdings of the Marvin Samson Center for the History of Pharmacy. In each instance, an object was conceived with a particular function in mind, which ranged from the purely utilitarian to the purely decorative, but very often with the boundary between the two being blurred.
The exhibition runs through Jan. 31, 2011. For museum hours and directions, visit www.usp.edu/museum/visit.shtml.
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Detail of a plaster model of the human body and its organs, New York Biological Supply Co., Inc., New York ca. 1950
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Detail of a lithographic poster advertising “Tuttle’s Horse Elixir,” published by Buck Printing Co., Boston, ca. 1920
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