Whenever I stroll by the old Morbid Anatomy Museum on Third Avenue it makes me a little nostalgic for the place where my life was when it first opened in 2014, when I lived nearby with my then-boyfriend and we obsessively kept tabs on the constant stream of new businesses cropping up in the area, before Trump, before I started to feel old all the time, and before my beloved dad died. Back then, I thought the concept of a museum/cafe focused on medical oddities and taxidermy was cool from a distance, and when it closed a few years later, I remember feeling sad that there weren’t enough weirdos like me in the world to sustain something so out there. Now that my relationship with death has changed a bit, I’m much more convinced of the need for everyone to have a place and time to ponder it creatively, intellectually, and without dread or fear. So, needless to say, I was glad to see that a new, scaled-down iteration of the museum, The Morbid Anatomy Library, has been reborn in Green-Wood Cemetery, which is a few blocks from where I now live and a favorite spot for downtime and reflection. On Friday night, there will be an after-hours garden party in the Cemetery’s Fort Hamilton Gatehouse to celebrate spring and the opening of Morbid Anatomy’s latest exhibition, Envisioning the Afterlife: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. From 6:30-8:30pm, there will be music, refreshments, and a tour of the library given by its creators, Joanna Ebenstein and Laetitia Barbier. Tickets are $15 each.
