The members of the Board of Direction, of the Government Council, deans and antique deans and directors of centres and other members of the university community did not want to miss the inauguration of the sculpture “Altruism”.

This sculpture, that in words of the Principal Maria Vicenta Mestre “has been projected in the framework of the 525 anniversary of the Universitat de València, with which the institution wants to pay gratitude to everyone who, throughout history, has left their body to science and teaching”.

A generosity that is remembered wit the sculpture of the artist Jesús Martínez Lorente “Chule”, who has design and projected a steel sculpture of six metres high that represents the figures of a man and a woman opening their bodies and leaving them to research, science and teaching.

An altruism through formation, research and transfer of knowledge that allows, as the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Amparo Ruíz has shown, that more than 2,500 degree and postgraduate students go through the Dissection Room each year. Or that thanks to the 10 research groups with which the department has collaborated, had published in the last years 10 Doctoral Theses, 30 research articles and 50 communications.

The sculpture is situated in the Darwin Square of the Blasco Ibáñez campus, in the space between the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and the Building of the Principal Administration, and its presented, in words of the artist, as “an interactive work, in which the public can go through it, use it as a bench, among others”. Moreover, the artist has also highlighted that the sculpture “has 40% recycled materials, a metaphor of what donating bodies to science means”.

In the ceremony also participated Alfonso Valverde, responsible for the Body Donation Programme, who in his intervention thanked the Universitat de València that will pay a public tribute to the donors and their families. And also the institutional support that implies a work like this and the visibilisation of a necessity of teaching, research and knowledge transfer.