art and biomed, blogging, displays/exhibits
Bioephemera vs. bio-curiosities and bio-anecdotes
I’ve followed Jessica JoslinPalmer’s blog Bioephemera for a while. I’m fascinated by her pictures and meandering thoughts. Many of her posts are inspiring for medical exhibition work (but she’s rarely to the point).
Eventually I found the answer in a February 2007 post, where she writes that Bioephemera is “straddling the awkward rift between biological specimen and art object, and doing so with grace and charm”. There you are! Self-characterisation sometimes hits the nail right on its head!
I wish, though, Jessica could raise herself above the charming stuff now and then and write more about ephemera as an analytical category — close to curiosities, anecdotes, etc. — for making sense of the contemporary biomedical/biotech world.
06 Dec 2007 Thomas
Hey. . . thanks for the compliment, but I’m afraid you’re a little confused. I’m not Jessica Joslin. That post was about Jessica Joslin’s artwork, so it’s not really self-characterization so much as a description of the types of art I find inspiring, that I wanted to share through my blog. As for the contemporary biomedical world, I maybe haven’t been posting enough on that, but that’s because I’m rather tired of it, having quit research/academia, and have just started a new career that is literally overwhelming (and thus post frequency’s gone down). I’ll see what I can do though. :)
Jessica Palmer
bioephemera.com
Apologies Jessica! — I mixed you (Jessica Palmer) up with the other Jessica (Joslin). That said, I don’t think I did a mistake about your self-characterization. You did indeed use the words “straddling the awkward rift … with grace and charm” to characterize Jessica Joslin’s work — but you also said, in the same post, that these words cover “exactly what this blog [i.e., your own blog] is about”. So I think it is accurate to say that the quote is (or at least was) as self-characterization as much as a characterization of Jessica Joslin’s work. Still, I find your blog inspiring :-)
Thomas
Weelllll, now, ephemera is a very useful thing in biomedicine and technology. At the Wash DC museum, our ephemera goes back to 1829, and up to the present. We keep three main types: 1.) trade literature (ie catalogues and sales brochures) 2.) brochures and other publications (ie AIDS walks brochures, CDC booklets) and 3.) reading files as used to be common in libraries which include newspaper clippings, biographical info and the like.
One could also consider other parts of the collection as ephemera – such as videos explaining how equipment works or how to perform a procedure. Certainly the people discarding them, frequently Walter Reed’s tv branch, did.
Many of these types of material are not traditionally collected by large institutions (*cough cough National Library of Medicine recently began cataloguing booklets or Library of Congress – traded away their brochure collection a couple of years ago cough cough*), but they can be very useful. NLM does have a large poster collection thanks to Bill Helfand which gets used a lot. However, one area of posters we see a lot of requests for are photographic copies of WWI posters, especially those with African-American soldiers – the originals, those ephemera, no longer exist. Here’s an example – http://www.flickr.com/photos/7438870@N04/2089023846/
The Smithsonian’s a bit bifurcated with departments holding their own collections, especially whatever Medical Sciences is called now, but Archives Center also has specifically collected ephemera – see http://www.nmnh.si.edu/naa/siasc/archives_center.htm
Mike, speaking for himself
Thomas,
I see what you’re saying, but not to put too fine a point on it, I said that work which straddles the bio/art rift is exactly what my blog is about – not that my blog is straddling that divide. Although I’d like to think it is!
I make this point not to be argumentative, but because my blog is about artwork first and foremost. I’m an artist, and that’s why I started the blog. I coined the name “bioephemera” after much thought because A) a blog is a record of ephemera; B) artwork is ephemeral; C) thought is ephemeral (I’m a neuroscientist) and D) scientific artwork is currently heavily influenced by the type of paper artifact now formally recognized, collected, and studied as “ephemera” – many examples of which I have shared (posters, advertisements, postcards, educational materials, etc.)
Thomas, I’m honestly rather confused. I appreciate the compliment of your post. But your remarks that I am “rarely to the point” and should “raise myself above” my current content seem to turn the post into a backhanded insult. Unless I misunderstand, you seem to be reprimanding me because my science/art blog is not covering the weightier topics you’d like me to cover. I’ve been trying to take it in good humor, but I have to ask – if you feel my blog is too “meandering” and “charming” for you, and not substantive enough, why are you reading it? There are many renowned academicians out there who make a career of substantive commentary, so I’m sure you don’t need little old me to supply it.
Mike Rhode – my neighbor in DC! Hi! – I never denied that ephemera is a useful thing in science and technology. Did you somehow get that idea? I think ephemera are invaluable, I enjoy discovering them, and I rue the era of the microfilm mafia, which prompted the destruction of many of our nation’s vintage periodicals (my mother was a librarian).
Don’t read too much into the fact that I’m not posting about using ephemera to analyze biomedicine. There’s no value judgment implied. It’s just not the topic I’m spending my precious free time posting about. I am not a curator, a librarian, or a PhD in the history of science, and my blog is something I do on my own personal time. It pretty much covers what I want it to cover. And with all due respect and appreciation for your interest, I don’t feel a need to “raise myself above” topics I find diverting and interesting. :)
Have a great week!
jessica
Jessica said, “I never denied that ephemera is a useful thing in science and technology. Did you somehow get that idea? ”
No, I was addressing Thomas’s point, “…about ephemera as an analytical category — close to curiosities, anecdotes, etc. — for making sense of the contemporary biomedical/biotech world” and trying to show how some of it is collected and used. Yes, I hate those microfilmers too – like America was going to run out of space… right. Unfortunately we’re about to see, are seeing in fact, the same argument made about scanning.
Sorry for the delay in replying – I thought my original post was eaten by the web when I hit a wrong button.
Mike, speaking for himself