acquisition, collections, conservation, curation, medical technology, recent biomed
Is this the death of the science/medical museum collections as we know them?
Nanowerk reports that researchers at the Micro and Nanosystems Department, Instituto de Microelectrónica de Barcelona have recently demonstrated that it is possible to produce and place small silicon chips inside living HeLa cells by means of different techniques, like lipofection, phagocytosis or microinjection. 90% of the cells remained alive and healthy for a week.
We’re talking about quite ordinary (but extraordinarily small) silicon chips that are made of a normal semiconductor material and produced by usual manufacturing methods. The chips can be used as intracellular sensors and the possibilites are endless — e.g., characterization, quantification and IRT monitoring of molecular processes at the single cell level.
This sounds like a promising route for molecular medicine. But it’s a potential nightmare for future medical museum curators. Good old steampunk medicine was about surgical instruments that operated on the level of visible organs. Now we’ve got a double problem: not only do we have to collect and preserve invisible cell-lines, but also take care of their invisible chips.
Does this mean the end of medical museum collections as we know them? Has anybody got a good idea for how to collect, preserve and display these creatures?
17 Mar 2010 Thomas
Would this really change so much? I mean, wouldn’t it be just like the genechip in the way that (bio)medical museums would have to collect the visible, tangible parts of the technology and explain the other parts with text and pictures – and maybe in the future also by actually showing how it works? Although I see the point about museums being about material things and therefore being threatened by the intangibility of this technology, one could point out that there is also no visible bacteria at medical museums. Rather, there is a variety of material objects centered on or related to the intangible presence of bacteria. Even in the case of nanotechnology, there will be tangible material objects placed in direct or indirect relation to the intangible objects that can be collected and used in a museum context. With the added benifit that this technology obviously has a flair for really neat pictures :)
Maybe this could be viewed as an opportunity rather than a threat to (bio)medical museums. The cultural implications and possibilities connected to technology like this really emphasises the need to explain and communicate the technological development and put it into a historical, cultural, political and philosophical context.
Hello Morten,
thanks for this comment; sure, we can display the macromachinery that produces the invisible nano chips and the macromachinery that keeps the invisible cells alive. And we can add tonnes of beautiful evocative images and a lot of text which explains in detail how all this works. But proxies are not the same ‘thing’ as stuff. What worries me is the paradox we are running into when we are focusing on the ‘thingness’ of science and medicine, on the one hand, and on contemporary and future molecular science and medicine, on the other.
Hi again,
Yeah, I see the paradox. But I’m not sure it is a totally new one or a threat. My point is, that there is allready lots of stuff the museum don’t or can’t show. Museums of medicine don’t really focus on the ‘thingness’ of the most important part of medicine: the bodies or diseases themselves, for instance. Or chemicals, hormones, radiation or other integrate parts of the last century’s medical history. Not really. They focus on the ‘thingness’ of things instead, so to speak. And in the case of nanomedicine, I don’t see the difference between displaying a nano-container or a pill box or a blood sample with HIV for that matter. You will not be able to see or sense the really important aspects (from a medical point of view) of the object.
That does not mean that I think all these cases or the recent developments are not a challenge for science communication, or that they don’t need to be investigated further in a museum context. As I mentioned before, this case emphasises the need for just that. (And as you wrote, there are definitely new questions about collecting, preserving and displaying the nano-objects themselves that will need answering.) But I think, from a museum visitor point of view, there is not much new to being presented with the macromachinery; even a syringe is macromachinery. So how does the macromachinery of nanomedicine look like? Can it in some way give an idea or a tangibleness to this new kind of medicine?
Hi Morten
no, it is not a new paradox, I would rather say that it is one that has intensified over the last century and a half. One aspect is the molecularisation of the body in terms of biochemistry and molecular biology, another is the increasing digitalisation and miniaturisation in all aspects of (medical) technology, a third is the increasing use of statistics and epidemiological reasoning in public health. It all turns the attention away from the phenomenological body of the patient. Whereas earlier the body of the patient, with his/her limbs, organs and tissues were at the centre of the medical ‘gaze’ (to speak foucauldian), it is now his/her molecular pathways and place in the global epidemiological pattern that is in the centre of the ‘gaze’.
I’m not sure I agree with your view that museums of medicine don’t really focus on the ‘thingness’ of bodies or diseases themselve. Body part collections and pathological collections play a central role in most medical museum collections and displays, and by doing so they reflect, I think, the organ level ‘gaze’ of the body.
For me, there is a difference between displaying a nanocontainer and a syringe. The nanocontainer is invisible and is only known by inference from its possible effects, whereas the syringe is very tangible.
The problem with the macromachinery of nanomedicine (i.e., the machinery used to produce nanocontainers, coated gold particles, etc) is that it has very little relation to the end use. Could as well be machinery to produce car parts or toys. So I don’t think it adds to the feeling of tangibleness of biomedicine.
I think we could make an experiment: why don’t we invite a couple of museum curators to build two different showcases with an emphasis on the ‘thingness’, tangibility, materiality, immediacy, and presence of two different sets of medical objects which have approximately the same function: one set of objects could be a clinical chemical laboratory from the 1960s, the other set of objects could be a contemporary lab-on-a-chip. One would then ask the curator to use material objects, images and texts in any combination to produce both a historical understanding of the use and importance of these sets of objects, and their aesthetic appearances. I would also like to know how the curators have reasoned. And finally I would like to invite the public to invite the results of the two curators’ work. What do you think, could we do such a museological experiment?
Hi Thomas,
Great idea! It would really highlight the museological challenges – and the changes and continuity – of recent biomedicine.
That would make an excellent experiment, I think!
Hi Thomas and Morten,
I’d go a long way to see that display, it’s an interesting concept.
Having read the contributions to the discussion, and the challenge to these two potential curators, I would like to add an additional dimension: that only clear, easy to understand language is used in these displays for the public – that neither curator is allowed to use words like foucauldian, phenomenology, micro- or macromachinery, or molecular pathways.
What is gained by this display, though, I wonder?
Who is the experiment for – who is this “public”?
Are we indulging in museological exercises rather than making a contribution to our visitors’ learning?
Are we missing a point if we do not include video and voice in our attempts to interpret something the eye can’t see?