displays/exhibits, history of medicine, history of science, museum studies, web resources
Making visible embryos — and the art of conservation
The recently launched online exhibition “Making Visible Embryos“, curated by Tatjana Buklijas and Nick Hopwood, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, offers a fascinating tour through a paradigmatic, but also highly controversial, aspect of the history of medicine: the engagement with and displaying of human embryos.
The exhibition invites visitors to move thematically through the development of different aspects of how embryos have been depicted through time. We learn about how research into embryology gradually moves from the secrecy of the laboratory to the public sphere in connection with debates about human development, birth control, and reproductive technologies like IVF. The curators also inform us on pathbreaking visualisation technologies, like ultrasound, and on the cultural impact of popularised images like those produced by Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson.
The exhibition also gives rise to some interesting conceptual questions. To be sure, the images and models, beautifully presented through excellent illustrations and photos, are the kinds of visualisations of the human embryo that have reached the widest audience and which have had the greatest impact. But if the show is really about visualising, and not just depicting and modelling, it seems to me that the centuries-long tradition of making specimens can also be taken as a pivotal technology.
This point is relevant for museums like Medical Museion. Without doubt, the best-known group of objects in Medical Museion is the collection of wet and dry specimens of human embryos, formally named Museum Saxtorphianum.
Like other anatomical specimens, these were produced to facilitate the study of embryology and teratology by making embryos and fetuses visible to researchers. And, as is well-known to any conservator, producing and maintaing these visualisations over time is an arduous and delicate task.
Whereas images and models of the fetus are now everywhere, as the curators of “Making Visible Embryos” state in their conclusion, displaying preserved specimens of embryos is still highly problematic in a museum setting.
20 Nov 2008 Søren
Hi Søren,
I agree, it’s a great web exhibition, and much better than much we have seen in the history of science/history of medicine web field.
The only thing that is a little disappointing, in my view, is the tight copyright: “No part of this website may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the authors (for text and design)”. The authors have done a marvellous job and wouldn’t really loose anything by offering their work under less strict copyright terms, for example under a Creative Commons license (except for parts of the site where they use others’ copyrighted material, of course).
Not even Wellcome Trust use to apply such tight copyright, e.g., Wellcome Images can be used freely for scholarly and non-commercial purposes under a CC license.
The His Embroygraph photograph is from the NMHM and as such, is in the public domain.
That said, I loved the website and blogged about it on Repository for Bottled Monsters at http://www.bottledmonsters.blogspot.com today.
Thank you all for the positive comments! I also appreciate Thomas’ remark; it is perhaps something we could or should have considered but having relatively little previous experience on the web didn’t. Would it change how people use the material from the website, though?
Hi Tatjana,
Both yes and no. Many people don’t give a damn about copyright on the net, and will probably just copy your material without paying much attention to your disclaimer. But the Honest Guys may be discouraged from using your stuff. A less tight copyright claim would also raise the chances of someone copying parts of your texts into Wikipedia articles on different subjects (people usually give credit to such loans in the reference sections of the W-article).