This exhibition examines the evolving role of the female body as a subject in art, exploring how it has been used to convey stories of desire, identity and power. Across time and cultures, the female form has been both celebrated and constrained, serving as a canvas for societal ideals, cultural tensions and personal expression.

Reframing the Muse questions traditional portrayals that often reduce women to objects of beauty or morality, while also highlighting works where women reclaim their bodies as tools for self-representation and defiance. Through themes of performance, identity and cultural appropriation, the exhibition uncovers the complexities of how the female body has been represented, interpreted and reimagined.

The exhibition has been curated by museum volunteer Delaney Brown, an art history student at the University of St Andrews. 

Open Monday - Friday, 9.30am-7pm (and Saturdays 11am - 4pm until 8 February). Earlier closing times may apply on some weekday evenings - we advise arriving no later than 5pm.

Main image: detail from Portrait of a Lady, attributed to Thomas Hudson, c.1740s

Background image: detail from Spirit of the Future by Rebecca Crompton, 1937   

Two events will be held on Wednesday 26 March to accompany the exhibition - a guided tour at 1.15pm and a discussion and drawing workshop at 5.30pm.

Find out more about University of Dundee Museums
 

Host: Ralista Madsen

 Via Teams Join the meeting now  Meeting ID: 353 445 631 529  Passcode: Kq7D33Vf

Bio:

Dr. Olga Vitek is the Raymond Bradford Bradstreet Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. She is also the director of the Barnett Institute for Chemical and Biological Analysis. Previously she was named the Sy and Laurie Sternberg Interdisciplinary Associate Professor at Northeastern University, and was a tenured faculty and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University.

Research in Olga Vitek’s lab explores synergies between statistical science and machine learning, as applied to quantitative large-scale mass spectrometry-based investigations, to understand the functioning of living organisms. The lab develops methods for (1) statistical experimental design, (2) detecting analyte’s signals in large and complex outputs produced by mass spectrometers, (3) causal and counterfactual inference of regulatory events among the analytes. The lab develops open-source software and educational materials, that are broadly used in academia and industry. These include MSstats (relative quantification of proteins in mass spectrometric experiments) and Cardinal (analysis of mass spectrometric images). The lab is the lead organizer of the educational event May Institute on Computation and Statistics for Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics.

Work in the lab has been recognized with the Chan Zuckerberg Essential Open Source Software for Science Award, with the Gilbert S. Omenn Computational Proteomics Award of the US Human Proteome Organization, with the Excellence in Research and Creative Activity Award of Northeastern University, and with the National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Vitek is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, a Senior Member of the International Society for Computational Biology, and an Elected Member of the Council of Human Proteome Organization (HUPO) and of the Board of Directors of USHUPO. She is Associate Editor of the journal Bioinformatics, and a member of the Editorial advisory board of Molecular and Cellular Proteomics and of Journal of Proteome Research. She is President of the Boston Chapter of the American Statistical Association.

Host: Dr Megan Bergkessel 

Venue: MSI Small Lecture Theatre, SLS

Abstract 

The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes severe acute and chronic infections in immunocompromised patients. Due to its resilience to antibiotic treatment, P. aeruginosa infections are a major cause of hospitalization with high mortality rates. Despite an urgent need for novel therapeutic approaches, key aspects of its physiology, including its growth and survival at the airway mucosal surface, remain poorly understood. 

In this talk, I will demonstrate how combining functional genomics (Tn-seq) with tissue-engineered organoids can generate a mechanistic understanding of P. aeruginosa infections and identify new therapeutic targets. Using this approach, we identified selective pressures and adaptation strategies employed by P. aeruginosa to grow and survive antibiotic treatment on the mucosal surface. We first found that metabolic flexibility is a major factor enabling initial colonization. Through genome-scale metabolic models and in silico gene essentiality analyses, we identified specific catabolic and anabolic pathways critical for mucosal colonization. Beyond metabolism, biofilm formation emerged as a key colonization strategy, albeit with significant trade-offs. Testing these predictions with live imaging of infections at the organoid mucosal surface revealed that, while biofilms enhance antibiotic tolerance and select for strains with elevated cyclic-di-GMP, they also impose costs by limiting nutrient access, slowing growth, and reducing virulence. Furthermore, in co-infections, less virulent biofilm-forming strains can protect more virulent non-biofilm strains, suggesting a potential mechanism by which virulent strains persist in the airway during chronic infections. Overall, our findings illustrate how P. aeruginosabalances the competing demands of survival, growth, and virulence in the complex airway environment. These trade-offs likely play a crucial role in driving phenotypic diversity during chronic infections. The mechanisms we uncovered may help explain how virulent strains persist in the airway and contribute to tissue damage and acute exacerbations.  

Finally, because chronic lung infections reshape the airway through cycles of damage and regeneration, I will conclude by discussing how organoid infection models can serve as tractable systems to investigate the airway mucosal epithelium’s response to prolonged exposure to bacteria. These insights could help us understand the long-term physiological impacts on both the host and pathogen during the progression of chronic lung diseases. 

Bio 

Lucas A. Meirelles is an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow in Alex Persat’s lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). His research focuses on host-pathogen interactions in chronic lung infections, using multidisciplinary approaches, including human lung organoids. 

Originally from Brazil, Lucas began his scientific career studying social insects and their parasitic microbes at São Paulo State University and later at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his PhD at Caltech under the mentorship of Dianne Newman, where he investigated the diverse effects of bacterial secondary metabolites on the physiology of opportunistic pathogens associated with chronic lung infections. 

Often environmental improvements or interventions are seen not only as a ‘nice to have’ but often as a negative drain on resources on a capital and revenue front. With Scotland one of the worst countries in the world for biodiversity loss, and the trend in climatic events, there needs to be a concerted drive to ensure we protect, improve and use, nature to it’s best effect. Place making and community wealth building presents a more progressive and cohesive model that allows multiple benefits to be built around interventions. We will present on Green Action Trust’s role in the Central Scotland Green Network and also on a couple of ambitious collaborative projects we are leading on: The Leven Programme and another, one of many, emerging opportunities in Glasgow. We will show that collaboration is key to transformational change and that nature and the environment we live in is not only critical for biodiversity, but for inclusive sustainable growth and our health and wellbeing.

Please contact [email protected] if you wish to join online.