In April, New Haven resident Joshua Foer, the best-selling author of Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, organized a tour of The Cushing Center at Yale University’s Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library. This month, the Cushing Center is being introduced to a wider audience by way of Architectural Record and The Architect’s Newspaper.
The Cushing Center, an exhibit space that’s home to the Cushing Brain Tumor Registry — which consists of more that 400 brain specimens — makes available to the public the research of the late Dr. Harvey Cushing. Language on the Yale Office of Public Affairs & Communications website reads: “Cushing graduated from Yale College in 1891 and went on to study medicine at Harvard. He spent his entire professional life studying brain tumors and developing techniques to remove them — documenting everything as diligently as he performed his surgeries, and passing on the knowledge he gained to those who followed.”
The Cushing Center was designed by New Haven-based architect and Yale School of Architecture adjunct professor Turner Brooks (Turner Brooks Architect). The July 2011 issue of Architectural Record includes design information about The Cushing Center along with a slideshow of the exhibit and images of architectural drawings and models.
The Architectural Record piece reads, in part: “In fitting the museum into a tight sub-basement space, Turner Brooks Architects wanted to maximize the display area and create a sort of winding journey through the history of brain science and Cushing’s life.”
An article by Julie V. Iovine, published Monday in The Architect’s Newspaper, reads, in part: “Few architects currently in practice have the imaginative flair and game interest in challenges that Brooks has demonstrated with a small but impressive output … Brooks, who teaches in the core curriculum at the Yale School of Architecture, wanted to translate Cushing’s own determined questing into a design conveying a sense of the mystery of inquiry and discovery.”
Among the curious folks who visited The Cushing Center in April was J.W. Ocker, the New Hampshire-based author of The New England Grimpendium: A Guide to Macabre and Ghastly Sites. On his blog, Odd Things I’ve Seen, Ocker describes The Cushing Center as “an awe-inspiring collection exquisitely displayed.”