Discover the value of Agatha Christie First Editions in this comprehensive price guide. Updated July 2024 with recent auction results and expert insights.
Abigail Goldman makes minuscule murder scenes. She assembles them from model train sets, minus the actual train. The people—often dismembered, sometimes by a...
Description Lee, the first female police captain in the U.S., is considered the “mother of forensic science” and helped to found the first-of-its kind Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University when the field of forensics was in its infancy. At the time, there was very little training for investigators, meaning that they often overlooked or mishandled key evidence, or irrevocably tampered with crime scenes. Few had any medical training that would allow them to determine cause of death. As Lee and her colleagues at Harvard worked to change this, tools were needed to help trainees scientifically approach their search for truth. Lee was a talented artist as well as criminologist, and used the craft of miniature-making that she had learned as a young girl to solve this problem. She constructed the Nutshells beginning in the 1940s to teach investigators to properly canvass a crime scene to effectively uncover and understand evidence. The equivalent to “virtual reality” in their time, her masterfully crafted dioramas feature handmade objects to render scenes with exacting accuracy and meticulous detail. Every element of the dioramas—from the angle of miniscule bullet holes, the placement of latches on widows, the patterns of blood splatters, and the discoloration of painstakingly painted miniature corpses—challenges trainees’ powers of observation and deduction. The Nutshells are so effective that they are still used in training seminars today at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore. Showcasing the Nutshells at the Renwick allows visitors to appreciate them as works of art and material culture in addition to understanding their importance as forensic tools, and to see Lee's genius for telling complex stories through the expressive potential of simple materials. While the Nutshells represent composites of real and extremely challenging cases featuring homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, Lee imagined and designed each setting herself. She was both exacting and highly creative in her pursuit of detail—knitting tiny stocking by hand with straight pins, hand-rolling tiny tobacco-filled cigarettes and burning the ends, writing tiny letters with a single-hair paintbrush, and creating working locks for windows and doors. The exhibition also highlights the subtly subversive quality of Lee’s work, especially the way her dioramas challenge the association of femininity with domestic bliss and upend the expected uses for miniature making, sewing, an other crafts considered to be "women's work." Also evident is her purposeful focus on society's “invisible victims," whose cases she championed. Lee was devoted to the search for truth and justice for everyone, and she often featured victims such as women, the poor, and and people living on the fringes of society, whose cases might be overlooked or tainted with prejudice on the part of the investigator. She wanted trainees to recognize and overcome any unconscious biases and to treat each case with rigor, regardless of the victim. As the Nutshells are still active training tools, the solutions to each remain secret. However, the crime scene “reports” (written by Lee to accompany each case) given to forensic trainees are presented alongside each diorama to encourage visitors to approach the Nutshells the way an investigator would. Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death is the first public display of the complete series of nineteen studies still known to exist. For the first time since 1966, 18 pieces on loan to the museum from the Harvard Medical School via the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, will be reunited with the “lost nutshell,” on loan from the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, courtesy of the Bethlehem Heritage Society. The exhibition is organized by Nora Atkinson, The Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft. Lee’s hyperreal constructions inspired contemporary artist and scenic designer Rick Araluce, whose immersive, large-scale installation is presented in the adjoining gallery. Rick Aracluce: The Final Stop opens concurrently with Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death on October 20th. Visiting Information Renwick Gallery October 20, 2017 – January 28, 2018 Open Daily, 10:00 a.m.–5:30 p.m Free Admission
If you haven't seen 'Fit for Murder' yet watch this clip at your peril. Just kidding. Rarely has there been a more low-key, if slightly cryptic, farewell by ...
In honor of the upcoming premiere of Only Murders in the Building, here are Mabel's best fashion moments from the last three seasons.
How to buy the chicest outfits from the reboot of Gossip Girl, which premieres July 8 on HBO Max.
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Sophie Hannah, Nov 2020
The strangling of a beautiful Brazilian woman harks back to three earlier murders.
Jack the Ripper Case of 1888
This true crime book makes you the detective, investigating some of the most infamous unsolved cases of the 20th and 21st centuries.MURDERS THAT DEFY DETECTION.Discover the stories behind some of the most infamous unsolved murders of the last century, including the Black Dahlia, the Zodiac Killer an...
Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan return in Moonflower Murders as editor turned sleuth Susan Ryeland and world-famous fictional detective Atticus Pünd.
This chilling volume brings together more murderous tales that shocked not only the county but made headline news throughout the nation. Covering the length and breadth of Buckinghamshire, the featured cases include the brutal slaying of a family of seven in Denham in 1870, the killing of a butcher’s wife in Victorian Slough for which […]
Surrey Murders is an examination of some of the county’s most notorious and shocking cases. They include the ‘Wigwam Girl’, Joan Wolfe, who lived in a tent built by a Cree Indian Soldier before being brutally slaughtered; the infamous stabbing of Frederick Gold by ‘the Serpent’, Percy Lefroy Mapleton; the poisoning of the entire Beck […]
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Tate murders, the shocking and grisly murders, on the night of August 8–9, 1969, of actress Sharon Tate and four other people by followers of cult leader Charles Manson. Two more people were murdered on August 10. Learn more about the crimes, the discovery of the perpetrators, and the trial.
