Comments on: Collecting medical artefacts as a public-private enterprise

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:31:30 +0000

Re. bad publicity: I guess you’re right — people wouldn’t know when we collect for our exhibitions and when we collect for re-sale. I was only half-serious (but thus also only half-joking :-)

By: Mike Rhode

Mike Rhode — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:12:24 +0000

Interesting idea, Thomas, but I don’t think you’d benefit enough to outpace the bad publicity you’d get of a museum selling its ‘collections’ even if they were collected to be sold.

Joanna, that sounds like a good exhibit. At the Medical Museum in DC we tend to run across more collectors of … ‘oddities’ … than medical instruments oddly enough, although Dr. del Cerro is donating his microscope collection to us in stages and we’ve recently met with a collector of veterinary instruments

By: Joanna

Joanna — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 15:23:47 +0000

The actual, physical show will be in New Orleans, scheduled for May of 2009, so yes, America only. But I will definitely make an online version, and will let you know when that has launched. Already seen some interesting collections, and off to visit a few more in a week.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:16:26 +0000

Hi Joanna, thanks for this! I cannot wait to see the result of your photo project — in the US only? Keep us updated! The cabinet-of-curiosity comparison makes a lot of sense too.

By: Joanna

Joanna — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:15:43 +0000

I totally agree about the importance of private collections and collectors. When I was working on my photo project about artifacts held in anatomical museums, I heard anecdotally quite a bit about from curators about the private collectors who routinely outbid them in their quest for acquiring new materials. Hearing so much from these curators, and also friends who deal in antiques of these sorts, made me quite intrigued to visit and document these private collections. To this end, my next photo project will be of private collections of medical curiosities, artifacts, and ephemera. An interesting side note: I know that this is a normal rhythm for museums--private collectors accumulate, then donate their accumulations to public museums upon their death--but the prevalance of these collections, and the high quality of the contents (not to mention their financial ability to outbid institutions) brings to my mind the pre-museum days of the Cabinet of Curiosity.