Born in 1711 but fully operative only by 1714, the Institute of the Sciences of Bologna was thought of by his founder Luigi Ferdinando Marsili (1658-1730) as a place for scholarship and experimentation, guided by the general project of renewing university education in Bologna. Luigi’s brother Anton Felice (1651-1710) had tried with no success because of the fierce resistance to innovation of the most conservative members of the Doctoral Colleges. The exhibition tells the story of this important passage in the history of Bolognese culture, and devotes an important space to two women, Laura Maria Caterina Bassi (1711-1778) and Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774). Laura Bassi was the first woman to get a degree in philosophy (1732) and a chair in natural philosophy at the studio. Bassi built a career as a teacher and a researcher at both the Institute and the Academy of the Sciences, becoming known as a Newtonian and an expert on the dynamics of fluids, optics, and electricity. Anna Morandi Manzolini, who began her practice as a wax anatomical sculptor with her husband Giovanni Manzolini (1700-1755), gained interest and credit in international artistic and scientific communities, and became one of the most famous wax modelers of the 18th century. The exhibition shows her wax self-portrait, recently restored, in which Anna Morandi represents herself in the act of dissecting a brain.