Atties Anatomy Academy, Toledo Museum of Art

The Rooms of Wonder series is Ms. Adams personal reflection and homage to those sacred and profane places where her dreams were nurtured. It’s theme is universal… we all have our Rooms of Wonder.

Attie’s Anatomy Academy is the second drawing in the series. It was inspired by her undergraduate years at the University of Toledo and the impact and influence that professors can have on their students. The drawing is her personal homage to one of her mentors, professor Diana Attie. Leslie Adams writes, “At the University of Toledo, I had the great fortune to study with Diana Attie, my mentor and later, friend, who first introduced me to the academic study of human anatomy and figurative art. She taught me to see.” “The time spent in Diana Attie's University of Toledo drawing class and the hours spent examining her favorite Old Master paintings in the Museum's collection reinforced Adams’ already clear idea that she wanted to be an artist.” Attie’s Anatomy Academy is another drawing of “magic realism”. It is literally a Room of Wonder where the viewer is transported into an ever-changing space found in a state of temporal flux spanning nearly a half-century, room 139 at the Toledo Museum of Art. Here, in this wondrous room recreated from memories, we encounter Ms. Adams as the clock forever strikes 1:30 PM as class begins. The space is a visual moveable feast of controlled entropy, filled with drawings, books, anatomical carts and models, bones and skeletons, and still-life. This haunting image is a monument to the thousands of students that entered it, and left better because of the lessons learned and the skills, knowledge, and humanity passed on by Diana Attie.

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