Biomedicine on Display

Alive
I carry a picture of a dead woman’s head in my memory. My encounter with her took place in King’s College’s Gordon Museum in London on a sunny afternoon last spring. I don’t exaggerate if I say she had an enormous impact on me. She has forever burned an impression of herself onto my retina.

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take her picture

This dead woman (she was red-haired) stares at me from her jar with formaldehyde filled to the brim. To me, she differs from all other specimens with whom she nevertheless shares the fate of being preserved, and being part of a huge collection made for educational purposes. Oddly enough she keeps staring at me, even though, because of some malformation, one of her eyes is missing and the other is closed. It looks like she is staring through her one and only eyelid and this is, for me, the most frightening aspect about her.

It is hard to say if her intense staring appearance is due to the condition of the skin of the eyelid, which has turned almost transparent and thereby, because of the skin’s semi-transparency, unveils a shadow of an eyeball underneath, or, and this is the second possibility, if her insisting attitude derives from her overall realistic look with wrinkles, toothless gums hidden behind her hollowed lips, and some beard-like hair that sticks out here and there from her chins, cheeks and forehead.

She is so damn real. What makes her presence obscure is probably that her lifelessness is so alive. By being so lively present, she seems to unveil her mortality. She touches me extraordinarily.

Dead
In the following, my story shall take a sharp turn, in contrast with the experience described above. My recent visit to Günther von Hagens’s exhibition Bodyworlds at Experimentarium, a science center in Copenhagen, is going to be my point of departure in describing how my experiences unfolded as I encountered the plastinated bodies in the exhibition.

Just to keep the record straight, my intention is not a critique of Experimentarium. I acknowledge their activities as a science center and a legitimate amusement park for, especially younger, visitors. My interest is rather in the seductive presence effects produced by anatomical specimens. Here von Hagens’s bodies deserve some critical examination.

Frankly, I didn’t really meet the bodies, which I had otherwise expected to do. With a few exceptions (the displayed cross sections of the body were pretty fascinating), I didn’t really ‘see’ or ‘feel’ them. Honestly, it felt as if they were not present at all; especially not the full body plastinates. Why?

In retrospect, keeping the earlier public debate about the authenticity of Günther von Hagens’s plastinated bodies in mind, I wonder if I could have predicted this outcome. I knew about the alleged originality and ’realness’ of the bodies on display and I knew about the plastination tecniques which leaves only some fifteen percent of the original body behind. So in principle I knew I wasn’t going to ‘see’ real human bodies. Nevertheless, I couldn’t avoid being disappointed.

Even when standing in front of a plastinated heavily pregnant woman with a nearly full grown fetus in her womb I was not particularly affected. I really made a persistent attempt to stir some emotions by repeatingly telling myself that “these are in fact REAL people”. But it didn’t seem to make any difference. I still didn’t sense the claimed realness of the real people. They all looked like plastic figures cast in all sorts of absurd postures equipped with bouffant eyebrows looking like those you can by for a Halloween party. As a result it was extremely difficult to relate to the bodies. Their artificiality actually created a perceptible distance between them and me.

And yet so alive…
Eventually, it wasn’t until I gave up my effort to get near the bodies that something happened. Suddenly I got fascinated, but my fascination was of a different kind than the one I had when I was confronted with a real body – i.e., the head of the woman mentioned above.

What altered my experience was my adjustment and change of attitude. Instead of expecting life and death on display, I began to comprehend the body statues as what they are. It is not that the bodies are not fascinating. They are, not as dead bodies though, but as a collection of écorchés (skinned musclemen statues). So, by accepting the distance between the showpieces and me (and maybe even allowing it to get bigger as I saw no point in expecting any lively humanness in them), I managed to experience them as they appeared in their artificiality. In that way they actually became enjoyable – although they did not move or touch me emotionally, they were enjoyable as painted écorchés.

In a previous post I’ve described some art works by the American artist Paul Thek which, by virtue of their playful handling of my sensous impressions, affected and fascinated me. Thek’s artificial versions of meat pieces are seductive, not in spite of, but because of their artificiality. If somebody had claimed they were derived from ‘real’ bodies, I’m quite convinced they would have immediately lost their charm; they would have been ripped of their ability to play tricks with my sensous experiences, twisting and turning my sense of what was real or not. I’m glad no one tried to claim their origin in once living bodies: if so I would have missed the excitement and I wouldn’t have felt the curiosity that grew inside of me.

Great initiative! Elena Corradini at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) and Marek Bukowski at the Museum of the Medical University of Gdansk (Poland) are proposing a European Anatomical Collections Network.

Elena and Marek’s idea is to launch a joint European program for the preservation, handling, and availability of
anatomical collection based on contemporary best practice in the field (the image to the right is from one of our temporary anatomical exhibitions in 2008):

They are going to present the project at the UMAC (University Museums and Collections) meeting in Lisbon in September, but as a starter they would like curators of anatomical collection around Europe to respond to a survey, with questions like:

Type of collection (anatomical and/or pathological and/or curiosity collection); date of foundation; founder’s name and collection providers and managers throughout history; primary venues (separate cabinet in University, palace or court, part of anatomical theater, etc.); researchers connected with collection; famous objects; description of kinds of objects; conservation strategy; availability, etc.

You can respond to the survey via these two links: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QMBDJJX and http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QZFN55K.

They would also like some feedback on what they think are the most important features of anatomical museums and collections, including:

• having an Anatomical Theatre for displaying anatomical performances.
• having a large variety of anatomical specimens.
• having the possibility of exhibiting historical anatomical specimens.
• having the display of human remains as an explicit exhibition strategy.
• focusing on the sense of wonder and fascination with the beauty, mystery and complexity of the body.
• drawing on visitors’ motivation for visiting the museum and their expectations of the museum.
• being intersted in the reciprocal relation between audiences and content (what is on show?) of anatomical collections.
• a focus on conservation problems.
• selcting the right kind of professionals for anatomical museums.

Send your views on these priorities to elena.corradini@unimore.it and marski@gumed.edu.pl.

(Unfortunately, I cannot attend the UMAC meeting in Lisbon; hope you will all have some good days in the Portuguese late summer heat).

We have just submitted an application for a major new gallery based on our anatomical and pathological specimen collections — and the in-house discussions are already becoming vigorous.

How to find conceptually interesting ways to display cancer tumours, conjoined twins, and twisted torsos? What’s the balance between spectacular engagement and ethical concerns? How to make the historical collections of the macroanatomical past work together with the microanatomical and molecular collections of present biobanks?

During the next couple of years we will embark on a more detailed planning process — we will engage medical experts, medical historians/sociologists, museum colleagues and the general public in a discussion about the best ways to build such a gallery and how to combine it with other activities in the museum.

One of the interesting perspectives is to what extent such a gallery might still play an educational role. Browsing the literature for inspiration, I fell upon an article in the journal Anatomical Sciences Education suggesting that despite the current emphasis on digital learning, some medical schools and many of their students still find collections of anatomical and pathological specimens useful for educational purposes.

As the authors remind us, anatomy and pathology collections (‘medical museums’) were central to medical education in the 19th and throughout most of the 20th century. But the role of such collections have diminished dramatically in recent years, mainly, they suggest, because of the use of information technology and web-based learning.

Accordingly, many medical schools have abandoned their museums and/or given away the collections. A few schools still think their museum collections are important, however, and some have even updated them and equipped them with new technological gadgets to support the interaction with the objects.

The authors point to the Anatomical Museum of Leiden University Medical Center and the Medical Museum of Kawasaki Medical School in Kurashiki as two prime examples of such upgraded museums.

The main use of the Leiden museum, says its website, is for medical and biomedical instruction, but high school biology teachers and pupils can visit it too. The showcases above contain over 800 medical specimens and models and were set up in 2007.

The Kawasaki museum (below) is huge, with about 2700 specimens on display on three floors in a specially designated building that focuses on contemporary medicine:

I guess most Western medical gallery curators would consider such displays terribly out of fashion. But although both these museums are a far cry away from what we here at Medical Museion will probably think of when we design the new gallery, we shouldn’t forget that such displays may work well for educational purposes. Actually, surveys at the Leiden museum suggest that virtually all students found audio-guided museum tours in the collection ”useful for learning” and that a majority (87%) of the students found guided tours in them “to be clinically relevant”. (On the other hand, 69% felt that “museum visits should be optional rather than compulsory within the medical training curriculum”; quotes from the abstract).

I’m definitely not a fan of visitor survey ‘research’, nor do I think the main function of a medical museum today is educational — but it’s nevertheless a perspective worth keeping in mind when we start discussing the design of the new gallery in more detail.

The challenge of how to display fetal bodies was attacked from very different angles at the September conference.

Morten Skydsgaard introduced us to the exhibition The incomplete child, in which the idea was to show the deviant body in its own right. He emphasized the importance, especially in controversial displays, of giving the visitors time and space for reflection afterwards. Read Morten’s full abstract here.

The next speaker, Sniff Andersen Nexø, talked about the meeting between research and exhibition making, as a desirable but not unproblematic way of curating an exhibition. She pointed out that it’s a great challenge to translate the theoretically informed academic research process into a display of physical objects and a minimum of words. Read Sniff’s full abstract here.

Suzanne Anker, the last speaker of the session, focused on the fetal body as a politically charged icon. We exercise power in the ways we choose to represent images of the fetus. The same object — a fetus — presented in different contexts and through different images sends very different messages. From thankfulness for diminished childbirth related death rates and cheers for scientific progress to calls for anti-abortion legislation and critiques of the psychological impact of prenatal diagnostics for handicapped people. Read Suzanne’s full abstract here.

In the discussion afterwards, the question of whether or not museums have any responsibility for the way their fetal specimens are represented elsewhere, was raised. There were comments from Thomas Schnalke, Karen Ingham, Thomas Söderqvist, Kim Sawchuk, Nurin Veis, James Edmonson, Wendy Atkinson and Nina Czegledy.

See a list of the abstracts here. Read more about the EAMHMS video clip project here.

From Medical Museion's collections

Tiffany Jenkins is soon coming out with a book titled Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority in Routledge’s ‘Research in Museum Studies’ series.

Drawing on interviews, ethnographic work, and media and policy documents, the book analyzes, says Routledge’s announcement, “the influences at play on the contestation over human remains, and examines the social construction of this problem”.

One potentially interesting result of Jenkin’s analysis (which supports my own experience here in Denmark) is that

the strongest campaigning activity has been waged, not by social movements external to the institution, as they are frequently characterized, but by actors inside it

As Jenkins points out, this has implications for how we theorise the museum.

The fact that Tiffany Jenkins is arts and society director of the sometimes contested (see here and here) London-based think-tank Institute of Ideas, makes it an even more intereresting publication. I’ve already ordered a copy, although 70 GBP is a pretty hefty price tag.

On next Thursday, 16 April, I’m contributing to a meeting on the theme ”ICOM’s Code of Ethics and the grey zones of museum practise”, organized by Danish ICOM.

The background for the meeting is that ICOM’s current Code of Ethics (from 2004) apparently doesn’t cover a number of ‘grey zones’, which Danish ICOM believes may be in conflict with the Code, for example, the problem about the collection and display of human remains. Write the organisers:

When do human remains constitute scientific material not differing from for instance animal bones or manmade tools, and when do they represent a deceased person deserving sensitive treatment in the entire museum process from excavation to exhibition?

I guess the human remains issue is the reason why Danish ICOM have asked me to participate (though I’m not sure they would if they had read some of my earlier writings on this issue, for example, my paper at the human remains conference in London in 2005 :-).

Other alleged ethically problematic issues include the fact that some museums allow auction houses to operate on their premises or offer museum visitors the opportunity to bring their collectables to the museum to have them evaluated by auctioneers, something conflict with the Code’s rule that members of the museum profession should not partake in any kind of heritage trade. Yet another problem is how museums shall handle international trade in cultural and natural heritage, for exampole, “How should Danish museum professionals deal with demands for the return of objects appropriated for instance in colonial times”?

The meeting will begin with four 30 min talks by Alissandra Cummins (President of ICOM) about ICOMs ethical rules; Bernice Murphy (Chair of ICOM’s Ethics Committee) on grey zone cases from an international perspective; Caitlin Griffiths (Museums Association) on grey zone problems in the UK; and Eva Mähre Lauritzen (the Natural History Museum in Oslo) about similar ethical discussions in Norway.

Then follows a two hour long panel discussion between Anne Højer Petersen (Fuglsang Art Museum), Peter Pentz (The Danish National Museum), Jette Sandal (Museum of Copenhagen), Mille Gabriel (Danish ICOM), Henning Camre (The Danish UNESCO Commission) and myself (Thomas Söderqvist, Medical Museion).

The meeting takes place in the Museum of Copenhagen between 1pm and 5.45pm. For further information, see here or contact Vinnie Nørskov, klavn@hum.au.dk. For registration, email mtj@museumstjenesten.com (tell them if you want lunch).

Today (Nobel Day!), Thursday 10 December at 8pm, Obervatory/Morbid Anatomy in New York hosts a talk by Mütter Museum‘s new director Robert Hicks, titled “Exquisite Corpses: Illustrated Lecture & Artifacts from the Mütter Museum”. I guess it’s too late now to get on the morning flight (unless you borrow Air Force One which stands idle on the ground in Oslo today), but the abstract might be interesting to read anyway — not least for museums that are planning to rearrange their anatomical collection (as we are):

Images of post mortem human remains are fascinating and disquieting. They amuse children at Halloween and disturb adults when on display at museums. Today’s omnipresent imagery of people doing everything at all times has not accustomed us to depictions of human mortality. The dead are speedily removed from view, and our direct contact with the dead is limited and controlled. Although mortal images can arouse empathy and may develop tolerance for a spectrum of human physical variation, other cultural voices argue for proscription and censure. In this presentation, Robert Hicks, director of the Mütter Museum explores our dialogue with post mortem human imagery by examining its relationship to politics and ownership of the dead. He incorporates perspectives drawn from anthropology, art criticism, history, museum curatorship, and criminal justice.