Biomedicine on Display

We have just started a search for 1-2 positions at the level of Associate Professor (alternatively Assistant Professor).

As readers of this blog probably knows, Medical Museion is an integrated research and museum unit for promoting medical science communication based on the material and visual medical heritage. The research profile is centered around the contemporary history of the biomedical sciences, medical science communication studies, and studies of the production of the material and visual medical scientific heritage. We have a world-class collection of historical medical artefacts and images, an active program for the acquisitioning and preservation of the contemporary biomedical and biotechnological heritage, a permanent medical-historical public gallery, and an innovative temporary exhibition program.

We are looking for two new members of faculty to contribute to our integrated research, teaching, heritage and outreach programme focussing on late 20th century and contemporary medical and health sciences in a cultural, aesthetic and historical perspective. The aim of the programme is to develop new modes of research-based collecting, exhibition making and web-based outreach by combining scientific content, cultural interpretation and aesthetic expression in innovative ways.

On the outreach side, we are developing research-based science communication practices for a variety of audiences – spanning from health professionals to the general public – in the form of exhibitions and web products, and with special attention to the aesthetics of science communication.

On the acquisition side, we are in the process of developing research-based curatorial practices (heritage production) in close cooperation with research institutions, hospitals, pharma, biotech and medical device companies, and patient organisations in the region (‘museum 2.0’) .

The appointees are required to do research at an international level and research-based teaching, however most of teaching obligations are substituted with museum work.

Read the official full job description below.
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We have tried many different ways of marketing our exhbitions to the prospective audience (posters, direct-mails, postcards, you name it) — with varying success. One of the problems with posters and postcards is the one-way communication; if people want more information, they have to make an extra effort.

In connection with the new extra-mural exhibition ‘Healthy Aging: A Lifespan Approach’ that opened two weeks ago in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences (see here). we tried out a more personal way to get in contact with our prospective audience.

The idea was to give students and staff at the University’s Southern Campus (Faculty of Humanities) and the Faculty of Health Sciences an opportunity to put a human face on Medical Museion. So some of our student docents were sent out to hand out flyers in the main buildings of the two faculties and to answer whatever questions people they met might have.

All in all, this ’in-your-face marketing’ operation was a success. It gave us a nice opportunity to have conversations about our collections and hear how students and staff responded do the exhibition. If any other museums has had similar experiences. wse would very much like to hear about it.

Here’s student docent Andreas handing out flyers in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences. In the background you can see a part of  ‘Healthy Aging – A Lifespan Approach’:

More pictures here.

A few months ago, I advertised the meeting ‘KörperGegenwart, neue Technologien, neue Sammlungen’ to be held at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden, 22-24 April.

Now the program has been finalised — and it looks very good! After a plenary discussion on ‘Schauplätze der Schönheit: Klinik, Kunst, Medien und Museen’ on Thursday evening, there follows two days of presentations, most of which seem to be very relevant for the future of medical and science museums:

• ‘Körperspuren im Deutschen Hygiene-Museum. Strategien und Objekte’ (Susanne Roeßiger, Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden)
• ‘Auf Biegen und Brechen. Zur (In)Formierung des Körpers’ (Stefan Rieger, Ruhr-Universität Bochum)
• ‘Der Körper und seine Teile. Vom Präparat zum transplantierten Organ’ (Katrin Solhdju, Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin)
• ‘Vom Körper zum Maß. Zur Geschichte der Konfektionsgrößen’ (Daniela Döring, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
• Vermessene Menschen. Vom Fingerabdruck bis zum Ganzkörperscan’ (Erika Feyerabend, BioSkop-Forum zur Beobachtung der Biowissenschaften e.V.)
• ‘Prothesen exponieren. Sichtbarkeiten neuer Technologien’ (Karin Harrasse, Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln)
• ‘Design in der Orthetik. Innovative Prinzipien der Körperanformung’ (Andreas Mühlenberend, resolutdesign; Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal)
• ‘Wie sieht der bionische Mensch aus?’ (Friedrich Ditsch, Technische Universität Dresden)
• ‘”It’s a Material World”´: Situiertheit, Verkörperung und Materialität in der neueren Robotik’ (Jutta Weber, Universität Bielefeld)
• ‘Von der Nasen- zur Gesichtstransplantation: Zur Geschichte und Zukunft der kosmetischen Chirurgie’ (Sander L. Gilman, Emory University, Atlanta)
• ‘Science Fashion´: TechnoNaturen und deren alltagskulturellen Umdeutungen im System der Mode’ (Elke Gaugel, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien)
• ‘Wie kommt die Seele ins Museum? Medizinische Museen und das Transzendentale’ (Robert Bud, Science Museum, London)
• ‘Den biomedizinischen Apparat ausstellen: Materialität und Digitalität in “Split + Splice” (Kopenhagen)’ (Susanne Bauer, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
• ‘Die Schärfung des Blicks. Kunstinterventionen in anatomischen Sammlungen’ (Ingeborg Reichle, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften)
• ‘Körperwissen in der Kunst’ (Ute Meta Bauer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston)

As you can see, all presentations are in German — so the germanophilically challenged may have problems.

More here and here.

For the record, here’s my introductory words at the opening of our new exhibition, ‘Healthy Aging: A Lifespan Approach’, last Monday:

Last year, the Faculty of Health Sciences established a brand new exhibition area in the main building, paid for by a generous donation from the Kirsten and Freddy Johansen Foundation.

The Dean, Ulla Wewer, asked Medical Museion if we would like to be responsible for setting up a series of exhibitions to represent some of the research done here at the faculty. And we said yes, of course, also because I thought this was a great opportunity for a university museum like ours — not only to get extra exhibition space in the main artery of the faculty, but also to get an opportunity to think about museums and science communication in a more differentiated way.

What I mean is that museums generally think of science communication in terms of broad outreach to the general public. That’s the kind of public outreach we’re practicing in our beautiful old late-18th century museum building in the city area a few kilometers from here. The old building is a site for experimenting with new forms for science communication to the general public. The basic idea is to show how the biomedical sciences permeat our lives and culture at large.

But this new exhibition area in the Faculty’s main building is not primarily intended for the general public. We’re thinking of it as a different kind of museological laboratory — as a site where we can experiment with displays for more professional audiences, and as a testing ground for exhibitions that highlight the aesthetic, cultural and historical dimensions of science. The idea here is to let scientists and students experience how culture permeats science.

The new exhibition area was opened last September with a show called ‘Primary Substances: Treasures from the History of Protein Research’, occasioned by the new big Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research. And today we are opening the next temporary show, called ‘Healthy Aging: A Lifespan Approach’, occasioned by the cross-disciplinary Center for Healthy Aging, funded by the Nordea Foundation.

In contrast to the protein exhibition, which needed quite a lot of explanation to make sense, this new show is much more self-explanatory. Generally speaking, museum exhibitions try to strike a balance between three modes of expression — by means of text, by means of visualisation and by means of displaying material artefacts. Sometimes you try to mix these three modes, sometimes you try to separate them. In this show we have gone halfway between mixing and separating.

On the wall panels, we present, mainly through text, how the scientists in the Center for Healthy Aging here at the Faculty understand their work on healthy aging; each of the research programmes in the Center has got its own wall panel.

The showcases along the wall, in contrast, speak about healthy aging in the language of visual art. Three years ago, Medical Museion comissioned photographer Liv Carlé Mortensen to create 15 photo collages of 100 year-old Danish man and women. The result was a unique work of art, which I believe captures — in a beautiful but also somewhat disturbing way — the existential dimension of growing old.

Finally, in the freestanding showcases on the floor, we display (in the third, material, mode) a series of historical artefacts from the museum’s collections that represent four kinds of aids associated with old age – material things that makes old people overcome the deterioration of their bodily functions, things that help them see, hear, chew and walk better.

As usual, an exhibition is not only hard work, it’s also a teamwork. So I want to thank the members of our museum staff — Bente Vinge Pedersen, Ion Meyer, Nanna Gerdes, Jonas Paludan, Camilla Undén and Jacob Kjærgård — for selecting, preparing and handling the artefacts. We are also very grateful to Mikael Thorsted for his design work and to Lars Møller Nielsen for the graphic design. And finally thanks to the team-leaders in the Center for Healthy Aging for providing information about their research programmes, to the Director of the Center, Lene Juel Rasmussen, for economic support, and not least to the Center’s administrator, Tina Gottlieb – it was Tina, who originally came up with the idea that we could take today’s event as an occasion to show Liv Carlé Mortensens photo collages of centenarians to students and staff here at the faculty.

Last Monday, we opened our latest exhibition, ‘Healthy Aging: A Life Span Approach’ in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences — produced by myself together with Bente Vinge Pedersen and Ion Meyer, and with the help of Jonas Bejer Paludan, Camilla Undén, Nanna Gerdes and Jacob Kjærgaard (all from Medical Museion); the showcase design and graphic design has skilfully been taken care of by Mikael Thorsted and Lars Møller Nielsen, Studio 8.  See an earlier presentaton of the idea behind the show here, and images from the construction work here).

The show was set up in the new exhibitions area in the lobby of the Panum building on Blegdamsvej. To keep the content as secret as possible — and spur bypassers’ curiosity — the showcases were covered right until the opening.

Last minute adjustments of the spotlights.

It’s me down there introducing the idea behind the show to the audience.

The faculty generously paid for the reception, including sparkling fluids …

Here’s me presenting Liv Carlé Mortensen’s sublime photo collages to Allan Krasnik, Department of Public Health.

From left to right: Lars Møller Nielsen (graphic design), Mikael Thorsted (showcase design) and Medical Museion’s administrator, Carsten Holt.

Quite crowded reception — and lots of positive responses:

Thanks to Camilla Undén for sharing the pics above — for more images from the exhibition, see here.

Since the snow descended upon Copenhagen a month ago everybody has been walking around wrapped up in scarfs and woollen clothing, trying to avoid the snowdrifts. Personally, my thoughts wander off to a warmer place — more specifically Southern France, where I took some needed holiday last summer and visited, among other things, the two medical museums in Toulouse.

Being a foreigner in France is not easy. The lingua franca in France is French which can be quite a challenge if one is far from a native French speaker. Not many people in the region speak English, and all signs (even in museums) are written in the native tongue. That’s a shame — there is a fascinating culture and history to be told, but unfortunately much of this history is missed if one does not speak or read the language.

Using my terrible French with a lot of pardon and merci I finally made it to Le musée des instruments de médecine des Hôpitaux de Toulouse and Le musée d’histoire de la médecine de Toulouse. Both museums are situated right on the edge of the beautiful Pont Neuf bridge and the exhibition rooms are situated in the old hospital building, l’Hôtel-Dieu. When searching for travel directions I had stumbled on the Hôtel-Dieu but I did not understand exactly what it meant. Two quotes:

The common phrase necator pauperum or ‘assassin of the poor’ was used for those who neglected their duty to succour those in need and guilty prelates could lose their status as a result. The bishops therefore built xenodochia near their cathedrals, of hospitaliae at the entrance to the cities. The former gave shelter to the poor and the sick of the town, who were known as the matricularii and were registered and maintained by the church. The hospitaliae, also called ‘maison—Dieu’ or ‘hôtel-Dieu’ flourished during the Carolingian Renaissance and took in mainly pilgrims and travellers.

and:

Most of the present-day Hôtel-Dieu hospitals originate in the episcopal domus Dei or the domus pauperum.

(both from Frexinos 2001, p. 19; see reference below)

Why place a hospital in Toulouse? Well, the city is one the road to the famous pilgrimage site Santiago de Compostela. The pilgrims came from all over Europe to pray at the tomb of St. James, and for the keen observer the St. James’ shell (seen in the centre of the picture below) is a dead give away.

Here’s the old hospital of Toulouse. The museums are located in the left part of the building. In the centre of the picture one sees the St. James’ shell:

The two museums have slightly different focus. One is about medical history in general. When you enter the building you step into a general reception area, where posters give a general introduction to the history of the museum (at least I believe they do; no signs in English!). One thing that really speaks in favour of the museum is the friendly staff. Even though the receptionist didn’t speak a word of English she was very friendly and we did manage to communicate. At least our conversation went so well that I was handed a brief description of the collections in English. It reminded of how important a museum reception staff is; they make the first impression so it has to be a good one.

The museum basically consists of three showrooms. The first, and smallest one, is on pharmaceutical history. From a museological point of view it is not impressive. The objects are placed in their display cases with a short description of their use, but there is very little context to be found.

In the next showroom the objects are roughly divided into different specialities, such as surgery and obstetrics. This part of the museum is definitely the best. It’s quite small though. Some of these instruments are quite impressive and even though I had seen most of them before there was one that stood out — the tobacco cloister seen in the picture below. Sure I had seen cloisters before (we have some here at Medical Museion) but this type was new to me. I have told so many visitors in Copenhagen about how the cloister was used to rid the body of black gall, but this one was different. Normally you would have needed another person to use it, but this one was designed so that it could be self-administered. The patient simply straddled over the cloister, activated the pump and let the tobacco smoke act as a laxative:

I also fell very much in love with the beautiful object below (for more on Theriac see here):

The third part of the museum is situated in the basement, and I had a hard time figuring out exactly what the organising principle was. There was a microscope and some x-ray equipment but exactly what the connection was escaped me — maybe becuase I didn’t know the language well enough.

The other museum — Le musée des instruments de médecine des Hôpitaux de Toulouse — is placed in the same building and right next to the one on the medical history of Toulouse. It is disappointingly small: only one single room and a couple of podiums outside. The custodian was extremely nice, however, and between her English and my horrible French we did manage to get a conversation going.

The best part of the experience was the moulages:

Below is a selection of some of the other objects displayed:

Drills used to perform trepanation:

Pacemakers:

And an instrument used to perform an abortion (Thomas actually wrote about these kind of instruments a year ago):

Both museums were indeed interesting and there was a great feeling in the old historical buildings. One of the best things about my visit though was that I bought a book by Jacques Frexinos entitled The Hospitals of Toulouse. A Thousand Years of History (2001), an excellent introduction to the topic of hospital history. I strongly recommend you to get a copy before visiting the Toulouse museums (the French version can be bought here.)

Toulouse is a beautiful city and if one is interested in medical history I would recommend a visit. Not so much for the museological experience, but the objects in themselves are interesting.

At the picture above you can see the Pont Neuf and in the background the old hospital buildings that house the museums.

Medical museums are usually full with old and new medical science instruments. But they tend to be kept in storage because it is difficult to display them in a meaningful way. It’s much easier to put moulages, pickled organs and surgical instruments on show. Medical science instruments usually need truckloads of description and contextualisaton to make sense in museum displays. (Probably because they don’t ‘talk’, some people would say :-)

Neither do many museum curators give much thought to the historicity of their display techniques. How have display practices changed over time and how do these practices reflect museum culture, politics and technologies?

Such question wil hopefully be discussed at the 29th symposium of the Scientific Instrument Commission, which will be held in Firenze, 4-9 October 2010 on the theme ‘Instruments on display’, i.e., how instruments have been presented in scientific collections, museums and permanent and temporary exhibitions throughout modern history up to the present:

Did didactic, scientific, celebrative, propagandistic and rhetorical considerations significantly influence the manner of displaying instruments? How were instruments presented in a Wunderkammer of the Renaissance, in a 18th-century cabinet or in a 19th-century exhibition? How and why are they shown in contemporary science museums?

This year’s symposium is sponsored and organized by Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza (Museo Galileo) and Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica. The meeting is open to “anyone interested in the history, preservation, documentation of use of scientific instruments”, whether academic scholars, curators, collectors or students.

Send abstract before 1 June, 2010 by filling in this template.
More info on the symposium website.

As I’ve announced in an earlier post, we’re opening the next show in the external exhibition area in the Panum Building — titled ‘Healthy Aging: A Life Span Approach’ — on next Monday (8 February) at 2pm.

Yesterday, exhibition architect Mikael Thorsted and our own museum assistant Jonas Paludan were hanging some of Liv Carlé Mortensen’s colleages of centenarians:

. 

Special curator Camilla Undén removed old texts from the former exhibition (’Primary Substances’):

And Mikael was also busy doing some welding angle grinding to adjust the wrought iron locks of the freestanding showcases:

More about the background for the exhibition here.

(thanks to Bente for shooting the pics yesterday)

As Bente writes on our Danish blog (Museionblog), we thought at first that Sven Erik Hansen (former consultant rheumatologist, now guest researcher here at Medical Museion) had a fit of belated Xmas nostalgia when he hanged this ’thing’ made of coloured gift wrappage ribbons in our lunch room earlier today.

But it’s actually more museum-related than we first thought. Turned out it’s a play on one of the central images involved in the preparation phase we’re in right now for the next show in our external exhibition area in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences.

 We — i.e. Sven Erik, Adam Bencard, Bente Vinge Pedersen and myself — have decided that the exhibition (to be opened in October) shall be a reflection on some of the central aspects of current research on the relation between obesity and type-2 diabetes.

We have started reading some of the scientific literature on G-proteins and G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR, not be confused with the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution :-), which play a crucial role in these and many other metabolic processes.

Sven Erik’s coloured ribbon decoration is a spontaneously made simple model of such a GPCR receptor. Here’s a more scientifically accurate one:

(from here)

I’m not suggesting that we shall aim for a low-budget exhibition. But it reminds me that sometimes you don’t need fancy 3D-software to make evocative molecular models.

We’ll get back with more news about the progress of the exhibition in the next couple of months.

We thought our storage facilities were warm enough to work in, even in the winter. But the current Arctic spell — which is a proof of the simple fact that global warming isn’t evenly distributed around the world — has forced one of our external designers, Mikael Thorsted, to wear winter cloths when inspecting artefacts for our new exhibition:

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What is going on? Well, ‘Primary Substances‘ — the first exhibition in our brand new extramural temporary exhibit area in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences — is closing tomorrow. It will be followed by ’Healthy Aging’, which approaches the major global challenge of ageing (sic!, see disclaimer below) in three different ways — through science, art, and cultural history:

Through science: Studies of the process of aging is a rapidly growing international research field. How can the biological and social sciences and the humanities help us experience a more healthy old age? In a series of wall panels we are presenting the new multidisciplinary Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, established in 2009 by means of a grant from the Nordea Foundation.

Through art: Science is not very good at capturing the existential dimension of aging or visualizing the accumulated layers of life experience. But that’s something that art can do. Acclaimed photographer Liv Carlé Mortensen has created a photo and interview collage series of portraits of Danish centennarians, called ‘100 Light Years’ (we are displaying the series of commissioned photo collages that Liv made for our intramural ‘Oldetopia’ exhibition two years ago).

Through cultural history: Finally, aging has its own visual and material cultural symbols. Two showcases in the lounge area are going to display historical objects from our rich historical collections that represent four kinds of aids that have been associated with old age — artefacts that have helped us overcome the deterioration of bodily functions.

The show is produced by myself together with Bente Vinge Pedersen, Jonas Bejer Paludan, Ion Meyer and Nanna Gerdes from Medical Museion. Design and graphics is taken care of by Mikael and Lars Møller Nielsen, Studio 8, Copenhagen.

We are also working closely together with Tina Gottlieb, administrative head of the Center for Healthy Aging, and the team leaders of the Center’s five research programmes, who have contributed text proposals and images for the wall panels. But lots of editing and re-writing, because few academic scholars really understand how little text you can actually display on a 125×85 cm wall panel :-)

‘Healthy Ageing’ is scheduled to open on Monday, 8 February. More about it later.

(Disclaimer: for purely irrational reasons, I don’t like the American spelling of ‘aging’, but prefer Br. Eng. ‘ageing’. However, the Center for Healthy Aging, which pays for the show, has adopted the American spelling practice, so we courteously adjust to this fact to avoid a bi-lingual show.)

The Mori Art Museum in Tokyo is currently showing an exhibition called ‘Medicine and Art: Imagining a Future for Life and Love’, showcasing 150 works of art — some are installations designed by artists, other are historical medical artefacts that are contextually transmogrified into art objects by being situated in the art museum space, like these:

From Boing Boing.

Adds to my general impression that the identity of a medical artefact — as a historical museum artefact, as a clinical tool, as an art object, etc — is all about context. Framing means everything.

In late March, Rikke Schmidt Kjærgaard (which several of us here at Medical Museion met when she gave a seminar here a couple of years ago and who is now working at the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit, University of Cambridge) is organising a meeting of great relevance for anyone interested in biomedicine on display, whether in museums or on the screen.

Titled ‘Have you ever seen a molecule? Art, science and visual communication’, the two-day meeting at the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), 25-26 March, concentrates on the correlation between art/design and molecular biology, in particular structural biology, and on the impact of the arts and artistic practices on scientific culture. Current molecular biological research is very dependent upon visualisation methods, both in the production of intepreted data and in the communication to other scientists and the public at large. The call for papers explains the relevance of this topical issue, both for scientists and for science communicators, understood broadly:

Despite the fact that structural images of individual projects are made by thousands of researchers in laboratories around the world, there is as yet no general consensus on what makes a good image. Consequently, there is no obvious and necessary correlation between the images made for pragmatic and heuristic purposes in the laboratory, those chosen for posters and conference presentations, the images accompanying article submissions, and finally those that will be selected or further designed for public engagement and communication. Instead, how specific traits should be visualised, which colour schemes should be applied and how to pick the perfect image for specific purposes depend to a large degree upon pragmatic categories and local factors within individual laboratories and research groups, as well as on editorial decisions and a stronger promotional value, at least to some degree independently of scientific preferences and arguments.

Interdisciplinary collaboration in visualising molecular structures lies at the very core of contemporary research processes and products. Bringing art, design and science together is far more than just an interesting experiment in transdisciplinary cross-communication, it is a necessary step in exploring new ways of optimising imagery at the molecular level and thus breaking new ground. We depend upon this in the arts as well as in the sciences in the future university to make things better and to advance our knowledge of life at a molecular level.

Rikke/CRASSH welcomes submissions for presentations broadly within visualisation of science. Send a <250 words abstract, a brief CV and a few lines about your interest in the conference before 1 February 2010 to rsk@mrc-mbu.cam.ac.uk (and please use the form here).

Registration fee (includes catering) is a bargain (£30 for faculty, £15 for students.). Registration will be available from the conference website shortly.

The 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held at the University of Copenhagen, 16–18 September, 2010.

This year’s conference focuses on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary developments in medical science and technology.

The image of medicine that emerges from most museum galleries and exhibitions is still dominated by pre-modern and modern understandings of an anatomical and physiological body, and by the diagnostic and therapeutical methods and instruments used to intervene with the body at the ‘molar’ and tangible level — limbs, organs, tissues, etc.

The rapid transition in the medical and health sciences and technologies over the last 50 years — towards a molecular understanding of human body in health and disease and the rise of a host of molecular and digital technologies for investigating and intervening with the body — is still largely absent in museum collections and exhibitions.

As a consequence, the public can rarely rely on museums to get an understanding of the development and impact of the medical and health sciences in the last 50 years. Biochemistry and molecular biology have resulted in entirely new diagnostic methods and therapeutic regimes and a flourishing biotech industry. The elucidation of the human genome and the emergence of proteomics has opened up the possibility of personalised molecular medicine. Advances in the material sciences and information technology have given rise to a innovative and highly productive medical device industry, which is radically transforming medical practices. But few museums have so far engaged seriously and in a sustained way with these and similar phenomena in the recent history of medical sciences and technologies.

The contemporary transition in medical and health science and technology towards molecularisation, miniaturisation, mediated visualisation, digitalisation and intangibilisation is a major challenge for the museum world; not only for medical museums, but also for museums of science and technology, and indeed for all kinds of museums with an interest in the human body and the methods for intervening with it, including art museums, natural history museums and museums of cultural history.

Contemporary medicine is not only a challenge to exhibition design practices and public outreach strategies but also to acquisition methodologies, collection management and collection-based research. How do museums today handle the material and visual heritage of contemporary medical and health science and technology? How do curators wield the increasing amount and kinds of intangible scientific and digital objects? Which intellectual, conceptual, and practical questions does this challenge give rise to?

The meeting will address questions like (but not limited to):

• How can an increasingly microanatomical, molecularised, invisible and intangible (mediated) human body be represented in a museum setting? Does the post-anatomical body require new kinds of museum displays?
• How can museums make sense of contemporary molecular-based and digitalised diagnostic and thereapeutic technologies, instrumentation and investigation practices in their display practices?
• How can museums make use of their older collections together with new acquisitions from contemporary medicine and health science and technology?
• What is the role of the visual vs. the non-visual (hearing, smell, taste, touch) senses in curatorial practice and in the public displays of contemporary medical science and technology?
• What can museums learn from science centers, art-science event venues etc. with respect to the public engagement with contemporary medical science and technology? And, vice versa, what can museums provide that these institutions cannot?
• How can museums draw on bioart, ‘wet art’ and other art forms to stimulate public engagement with the changing medical and health system?
• How does physical representations of contemporary medicine in museums spaces relate to textual representations in print and digital representations on the web?
• How can museums integrate emerging social web technologies (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc.) in the build-up of medical and health exhibitions?
• What kind of acquisition methods and policies are needed for museums to catch up with the development of contemporary medical science and technology, especially the proliferation of molecular and digital artefacts and images?
• What kind of problems do museum encounter when they expand the acquisition domain from traditional textual, visual and tangible material objects to digital artefacts (including software, audio- and videorecordings, and digitally stored data) and non-tangible scientific objects.
• How can participatory acquisitioning, crowd-sourcing, wiki-based methods, etc. (‘museum 2.0’) be employed for the preservation and curation of the contemporary medical heritage?
• How can curatorial work in museums draw on medical research and engineering and on academic scholarship in the humanities and social sciences? And, vice versa, how can museums contribute to medical teaching and research and how can their collections stimulate the use of physical objects in the humanities and social sciences?

The conference will employ a variety of session formats. In addition to keynotes and sessions with individual presentations of current research and curatorial work there will also be discussion panels and object demonstration workshops.

We welcome submissions from a wide range of scholars and specialists — including, for example, curators in medical, science and technology museums; scholars in the history, philosophy and social studies of medicine, science and technology; scholars in science and technology studies, science communication studies, museum studies, material studies and visual culture studies; biomedical scientists and clinical specialists; medical, health and pharma industry specialists with an interest in science communication; engineers and designers in the medical device industry; artists, designers and architects with an interest in museum displays, etc.

We are especially interested in presentations that involve the use of material and visual artefacts and we therefore encourage participants to bring illustrative and evocative (tangible or non-tangible) objects for demonstration.

The meeting will begin on Thursday 16 September (noon) and end on Saturday evening 19 September, 2010.

100-300 word proposals for presentations, demonstrations, discussion panels, etc. shall be sent before 28 February 2010 to the chair of the program committee, Thomas Soderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk.

A meeting website for registration and hotel bookings will be established in early January 2010. A number of hotel rooms will be prebooked.

Programme committee:
Ken Arnold, Wellcome Collection, London
Robert Bud, Science Museum, London
Judy Chelnick, National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.
Mieneke te Hennepe, Boerhaave Museum, Leiden
Thomas Soderqvist, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (chair).

Local organising committee:
Anni Harris, Bente Vinge Pedersen, Carsten Holt, Morten Bulow and Thomas Soderqvist, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen.

For further information about the academic programme, please contact Thomas Soderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk. For practical information about travel, accommodation, etc., see http://www.mm.ku.dk/sker/eamhms.aspx, or contact Anni Harris, konference2010@sund.ku.dk after 4 January 2010.

The conference is hosted by Medical Museion; further information will be posted on the museum’s website (www.museion.ku.dk) and on this blog.

The Brain Observatory at UCSD is right now showing the slicing of the brain of an amnesic patient into histological sections on streaming video.

The whole brain of the dead patient (called H.M.) was frozen to -40C and is now being sectioned in a whole-organ microtome during one continuous session that they expect will last about 30 hours. After sectioning the brain they will do ex vivo MRI and so called blockface imaging, and will of course store all the histological sections. The whole sectioning process is streamed on video and will end later today. Watch the live video here.

This is as far as they came at 9.30 am today when I made a screen-dump:

Fascinating histology live!

(thanks to Alex for the tip)

Is it really the case that almost all museum exhibitions dealing with medical themes these days are displaying DNA-images and colourful neuroscanning pictures?

Well, at least this is what the organisers of a meeting in Dresden next April seem to be suggesting. I think they are exaggerating a bit :-). But that said, the theme of the meeting — KörperGegenwart, neue Technologien, neue Sammlungen [contemporary bodies, new technologies, new collections] — is right on the spot.

The point of departure for the meeting — jointly organised by Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin and Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden — is that the colonisation of the body by means of the life sciences has resulted in a gradual retreat from the immediately visible and material body.

An invisible biomedical body

The concepts, models and findings of contemporary biomedicine defy immediate visualisation, collecting and conservation. Therefore museums like Deutsche Hygiene-Museum, which was founded with the purpose of displaying the body, find themselves in an entirely new situation.

I couldn’t agree more — this is actually the central point in the paper on biomedicine as a challenge to museums that Adam, Camilla and I have just published. So we have every reason to participate (if we can: the meeting language is German and my German is rusty at best :-).

Rusty or not — it’s worth participating, because the meeting will address three types of timely questions for medical museums: first, the history of the techniques, tools and concepts by means of which the human body has been cut, dissected, interpreted and displayed; second, whether current biomedicine has made the body immaterial; and third, how the new biomedical body affects museum collection practices.

The meeting takes place 22-24 April next year. Read the call for papers here. If you want to participate, send a note to Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, tagungszentrum@dhmd.de, or contact one of the four organisers: Sandra Mühlenberend (sandra.muehlenberend@dhmd.de), Susanne Roeßiger (susanne.roessiger@dhmd.de), Uta Kornmeier (kornmeier@zfl-berlin.org or Katrin Solhdju (solhdju@zfl-berlin.org).