• No longer relegated to your orthopedist's exam room, anatomical drawings continue to inspire contemporary artists. Today's artists don't try to outdo Leonardo; instead they incorporate collage, painting and photography to express body systems in new ways. Frederick Sommer cuts and pastes pictures from "Gray's Anatomy" into eerie, hybrid bodies. Joy Garnett took a found cache of X-rays as the basis for her suite of elegiac paintings. Connie Imboden's distressed gelatin prints portray psychologically loaded bodies and forms. In this context, Doug and Mike Starn's large-scale prints of twisting trees become knots of spidery veins. According to these artists, human flesh encases the decidedly surreal.

 

"Visionary Anatomies" at the National Academy of Sciences, 2100 C St. NW, Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., to May 20. 202-334-2436.