Biomedicine on Display

I have just had a paper accepted for a very interesting symposium called Representing the Contentious, organized in London 14 October by Bronwyn Parry, Ania Dabrowska and Wellcome Trust People Award.

My presentation contains many images from my PhD Delineating Disease: a system for investigating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva that were not presented to the public for reasons I will discuss.

Drawing hidden truths

How do you show disease in a way that reveals new insights, is clear, informative, is understandable to members of the public as well as to medical experts, and yet remains respectful to the subject? And what if this research is also set within the context of the medical museum where processes of preparation and display must also be considered?

In an artistic research PhD, a system using drawing as a valid research methodology to investigate a rare disease was developed. It presented a breadth of experiences of a disease called FOP and also revealed the disease within the context of museum conservation and display. The activity of drawing was shown to both initiate the act of looking and evidence the journey of understanding taken during this process. It involved actually spending time in the presence of people and objects, and forming relationships. This commitment maintained dignity and respect for people and objects, and the drawings were seen to be informative and sensitive. Drawing was used not merely to record, but as a participatory activity. Evidence showed the research revealed new insights, confirmed medical opinions about the progression of the disease and presented a far greater breadth of experiences of FOP than previously seen.

But the impact of this research also had unexpected consequences. Certain drawings were not included in the exhibition that formed part of the final research exposition, as they were deemed unsuitable. Medical experts were ‘shocked’ by drawings presenting the methods involved in preparation of donors with the disease. These processes integral to the research, hidden behind the scenes of the museum, were not what the experts had expected to see.

But the greatest impact was on the people with FOP. I was completely unprepared for their reactions when they saw drawings of the disease. Their responses to being drawn were positive. They appreciated someone looking at them without staring, spending time with them, bothering to see them. Despite having seen their own X-rays, CT scans and read medical books, when they saw other drawings of FOP they were shocked. Unlike medical imaging, which requires training and experience to ‘read’, they ‘understood’ the drawings and felt their clarity revealed the hidden, terrible truth. They acted like a mirror. Conversely, they also felt it was vital the research was shown to make people aware of this rare disease.  The responsibility of this is something that has weighed heavily on me. Despite the research being seen to be valid, insightful and useful, it also had unseen consequences. What form of exposition should these contentious elements take, should they be shown at all?

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.

I found this interesting – consider it in light of museum materialities and aestethics:

“The symposium will also consider why academic and artistic projects are
subject to different degrees of ethical oversight and how the final
outputs of such projects are shaped by their prospective consumption in
the public domain.”

See below for the full call

——————————————————————————————————–

Representing the Contentious:  A Symposium

Dr Bronwyn Parry and Ania Dabrowska, Artist
Mind Over Matter, Wellcome Trust People Award

Call for papers.

14th October, 2011

10 am – 4 pm

Shoreditch Town Hall, 380 Old Street, London, EC1V 9LT

Representing the Contentious is a one-day interdisciplinary symposium
that will examine the complexities of creating and representing work
(whether academic or artistic) that, due to its ethical, political, or
cultural sensitivity, its subject matter or research methodologies, has
the capacity to cause or provoke controversy, offence or condemnation.
The symposium will examine how the production of such work is negotiated
not only through the personal relationships of those involved but also
through formal institutions such as Ethical Review Committees. The
symposium will also consider why academic and artistic projects are
subject to different degrees of ethical oversight and how the final
outputs of such projects are shaped by their prospective consumption in
the public domain. Contributions are welcomed from academics or artists
who wish to take part in this ‘insider’s view’ of representing the
contentious through a mixture of critical discussions and presentations.
The symposium will run in parallel with Mind Over Matter, a Wellcome
Trust funded science/art exhibition about brain donation and the search
for a cure for dementia that will run at the Shoreditch Town Hall, 11-23
October, 2011.

You are invited to submit proposals for presentations of your academic
papers and art projects for consideration.  Proposals should include a
short bio and either an abstract for academic papers or a project
statement for artists with image files (up to 8 JPEGs or PDFs up to 2MB
each). A collected edition of these works is planned for future
publication. Please email proposals to the either of the co-authors of
the Representing the Contentious Symposium and Mind Over Matter Project:
Dr. Bronwyn Parry at b.parry@qmul.ac.uk  or Ania Dabrowska at
aniadabrowska@mac.com

Submission deadline: 15 September, 2011
Participating organisations: Wellcome Trust, Queen Mary University,
London, CFAS, CC75C studies, The University of Cambridge.  For
information about attending the symposium please contact Mind Over
Matter at: aniadabrowska@mac.com  or visit www.ania-dabrowska.co.uk  -
Mind Over Matter.

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.

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).