The Beautiful Brain: The drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal

This traveling exhibition presents the extraordinary drawings of Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish pathologist, histologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel laureate, was also an exceptional artist. He drew the brain in a way that provided a clarity exceeding that achieved by photographs. Combining scientific and artistic skills to produce drawings with extraordinary scientific and aesthetic qualities, his theory that the brain is composed of individual cells rather than a tangled single web is the basis of neuroscience today. Cajal’s astonishing depictions of the brain —which combine cutting-edge scientific knowledge with consummate draftsmanship— offer much greater clarity than photographs, so much so that they are still in wide use today.

Eighty of Cajal’s drawings, many appearing for the first time in the United States, will be accompanied by a selection of contemporary visualizations of the brain, photographs, historic books, and scientific tools. After the debut at Weisman Art Museum, the exhibition will travel to university galleries and museums, throughout the United States and Canada.