Joanna Ebenstein
Joanna Ebenstein is a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist, award winning curator, writer, photographer, producer, art director, designer, and public speaker. Her work explores the intersections of art and medicine, death and culture, the objective and subjective, the living and the inanimate. She traces her lineage back to Judah Loew ben Bezalel, who is credited with creating and animating the Golem in 16th century Prague. She is a proud member of The Order of the Good Death.
Ebenstein is best known as creator of Morbid Anatomy blog, library and event series. She was cofounder (with Tracy Hurley Martin) and creative director of the recently shuttered Morbid Anatomy Museum. Her books include Death: A Graveside Companion, The Anatomical Venus, The Morbid Anatomy Anthology, (with Colin Dickey) and Walter Potter’s Curious World of Taxidermy (with Dr Pat Morris). Her writing and photography have appeared in The New York Times, K48, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and V Magazine.
Ebenstein has curated, consulted, designed and produced for institutions such as The National Library of Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine, The Mütter Museum, The Museum of Sex, Green-Wood Cemetery, London’s Wellcome Collection and Science Museum, Amsterdam's Vrolik Museum, and the Todd Haynes film Wonderstruck.
Her Tedx talk, Death as You've Never Seen it Before, has been viewed over 12,000 times. She has also spoken for institutions such as The New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Historical Society, Whitechapel Gallery, The American Folk Art Museum, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, The Science Museum of London, The Mütter Museum, University College London, the London Natural History Museum.
Ebenstein’s work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, National Geographic, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, CNN, Mental Floss, Time, BBC, The Utne Reader, The Village Voice, Vice Magazine, Bust Magazine, Collector’s Weekly, The Chronicle for Higher Education, Newsweek, and more. She has been interviewed on air for BBC’s Today, Inside Science and Women’s Hour shows, as well as NPR’s Weekend Edition, WNPR’s Colin McEnroe show, and PRI’s The World. She has also been featured in video appearances on Fox News, Newsweek, Toni on New York, Rocketboom Media, PBS’s Articulate and The Midnight Archive.