The new dean of the SUNY Downstate College of Medicine has given his students an unexpected anatomy lesson.
Dr. F. Charles Brunicardi posed for photographer Jack Mitchell in 1978 sporting nothing but a full head of curly hair.
The full-length nude portrait is for sale for $1,750 on the website 1stdibs.com and notes it is of “male model Chuck Brunicardi.”
“This photograph was from a session for After Dark magazine and was selected and signed by Jack Mitchell as one of his favorites,” the website says.
The eagle-eyed med students who spotted the photo have given Brunicardi a new nickname — “Dean Dong,” a SUNY Downstate insider said.
The now-balding 65-year-old Brunicardi was named dean in December at the state-run college in Brooklyn and started in late January.
A 2014 profile of the gastrointestinal surgeon in a UCLA magazine noted he had a side hustle as a musician and had recently completed an album of original folk/country music called “Where Sunset Meets the Beach” which had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
While Brunicardi was a medical student at Rutgers, he was signed to record labels “and in the summers of 1978 and ’79, he played at England’s Cambridge Folk Festival, on the bill with such performers as Don McLean and Richie Havens,” the UCLA magazine said.
Brunicardi did not respond to requests for comment.