A new exhibit at Harvard University explores the horrendous histories of nonconsensual medical testing on enslaved women and girls. In 24 artworks, the female victims of these atrocities are named, honored and avenged.

On a group outing, Black female physicians reflected on the troubling history of gynecology.

In 2019, the Resilient Sisterhood Project commissioned Jules Arthur to paint Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha. Dr. James Marion Sims enslaved and violently experimented on these Black women in the mid-nineteenth century, and his findings led to modern gynecology. These women have remained faceless and voiceless in contemporary medical discourse and popular memory. In collaboration with Curator Dell M. Hamilton and the Hutchins Center for African... Read more about Boston Art Review, 'Take the Day: Fourteen Exhibitions That Warrant Art-Filled Trips Across New England'

The frame shifts on a chilling history in “Call and Response: A Narrative of Reverence to Our Foremothers in Gynecology” at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. Focus moves from a once-celebrated white man, J. Marion Sims, the so-called “father of gynecology,” toward the enslaved Black women he conducted experimental surgeries on without anesthesia.

The newest exhibit in The Neil L. & Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery at The Hutchins Center is a powerful and impressive curated collection of art dedicated to the memory of Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha, three Black women who were enslaved and medically tortured by Dr. James Marion Sims, a man regarded as the father of gynecology. The exhibit’s array of mediums featuring sculptures, paintings, videos, and photographs, outlines a bittersweet memorial which connects past to present.

For more than a century, Dr. James Marion Sims was known as the father of American Gynecology, helping found the American Gynecological Association and developing new tools in surgery and women's reproductive health. But behind that is a disturbing history.

Hutchins exhibit centers lives of three enslaved women who underwent unspeakable experiments without anesthesia for J. Marion Sims