MEMENTO MORI Halloween Gala

About This Event

The building is doing most of the atmosphere here before the museum's own collection even gets involved. It's a 1917 mansion on Lake Shore Drive, built as a private home for Eleanor Robinson Countiss, who had architect Howard Van Doren Shaw design it as a direct replica of Marie Antoinette's actual chateau at Versailles, the Petit Trianon — Italian marble, a gilded grand staircase, the whole thing.

Dr. Max Thorek founded the International College of Surgeons in Geneva in 1935 to let surgeons from different countries compare notes, then opened this museum in 1954 inside his own former Chicago home — part surgical-history collection, part hall of fame for the field. The library alone holds over 4,000 rare medical texts, some dating back to the early 1500s, and the galleries run from acupuncture needles to early X-ray machines.

For one night, that whole building — 19th-century surgical instruments and anatomical art included — becomes the gala's backdrop instead of a rented ballroom. This is the fifth year running, it benefits the museum directly, and it's a genuinely different register than the standard Halloween costume bar crawl.