Biomedicine on Display

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.

Last month we presented Morten Bülow, the new PhD candidate here at Medical Museion.

We are also lucky to have recruited a new postdoctoral fellow — Lucy Lyons, whose research examines the role of drawing as an activity which engenders new revelations and communicates insight in its audience whilst maintaining the dignity of the subject being observed.

Lucy Lyon’s PhD-thesis from Sheffield Hallam Unversity, titled ‘Delineating Disease: a system for investigating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressive’ (2008), was based in the Museums at the Royal College of Surgeons of England where she drew the processes used to create, preserve and conserve specimens with a rare congenital disease. The PhD-project explored a system of drawing called ‘delineation’ that requires direct close observation of an object and portrays the specificity of unique visual experiences as opposed to generic archetypes. As well as making drawings of the skeletons of deceased patients, Lucy has interviewed patients living with the condition, and has worked closely with medical researchers studying the cause of the disease. Her work reveals the power of drawing to delineate the hidden structures of disease. The project showed that drawing is not mere documentation but is about participation. Understanding is gained in the activity of drawing.

Her research led, among other things, to an exhibition at the Hunterian Museum in the autumn of 2008 — read more about it here. She is currently on leave from the City & Guilds of London Art School. Read more about her earlier experience here, and see some of her art work here.

Lucy’s 2-year postdoc project at Medical Museion, titled ‘Now I see it! Drawing information from the collection’ focuses on the activity of drawing as a way of gaining insight and communicating information. It is aimed at visiting members of the public, the museum staff and medical and technical community as well as other artists and researchers. It is a participatory project that will encourage all to engage in different ways with the museum and the objects within it.

The project is financed by a grant from the Nordea Foundation to the Center for Healthy Aging, Faculty of Health Scences, University of Copenhagen. The Center was established last year with a budget of 300 mill. DKK for a five-year period — and a smallish amount of the total will be used for studies of healthy ageing science communication in a museum context here at Medical Museion.

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 ICOM subcommitte on University Museums and Collections (UMAC) has set up a moderated list to facilitate exhange of information between university museums. The list is open also to non-UMAC members. See more here — for subscription, go to: https://listes.u-strasbg.fr/sympa/unistra.fr/info/umac-ml

As some of you may have noticed, the online Image & Video Library of The American Society for Cell Biology has been closed since February, and nobody knew whether it would be opened again.

Last Thursday the ACSB announced, however, that the site will be re-opened and developed further by means of a $2,5 million ’stimulus grant’ from the NIH (one of the consequences of the new Obama administration).

According to ACSB’s press release, the present image and video collection will be turned into “a comprehensive, international digital library” and furthermore, by “developing a systematic protocol for acquiring, reviewing, annotating, and uploading the images”, the ASCB will create “an efficient platform for building the library at a rapid rate”.

These are exciting news for all cell image fans!

After the large-scale renovation of its permanent collection in 2005, the Hunterian Museum in London has expanded its outreach programme under the leadership of senior curator Simon Chaplin.  Today, the museum opens another new temporary show,  “Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots“.

Running until 23 December, the exhibition displays the world of medical robotics. Things like the Probot (1991), a robot designed to aid prostate gland surgery; Freehand, a robotic camera holder for keyhole surgery; mini-robots designed to make their own way around the inside of the human body; the prototype Robotic Camera Pill (2005); and the ARES Robot prototype (2009) which requires patients to swallow up to 15 different modules which then re-assemble inside the body into a larger device that can carry out surgical procedures.

The exhibition will also feature medical robots from sci-fi: from the 1920s ‘Pyschophonic Nurse’ to Japanese Manga and Anime, raising the question  to what extent scientists are inspired by the representation of medical robots in films, books and comics.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that the exhibition has been funded by, among others, The Japan Foundation and The Japan Society.

Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots events including anime and film screenings, discussions and robot family workshops.

Sounds like a great show — I cannot attend the opening — but it looks a must for the annual London trip.

While eagerly waiting for Jonas’ reports on medical museums in southern France, I’m reading the news about the recently opened exhibition ‘Delicate Operation: the History of Surgery in Tayside’ at the Tayside Medical History Museum in Dundee.

The exhibition traces the history of surgery in the Dundee region,

exploring the careers of some of the region’s most eminent surgeons of the past 200 years, the early development of surgical specialities, changes in theatre design and the history of local instrument manufacturers.

It is on show at the Medical School, Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, until 29 November.

Judged from their website the exhibition concept and design looks pretty traditional — but the artefacts seem to be gorgeous.

Here are some pictures from the opening of Split and Splice last Thursday, 11 June — parts of the audience, the opening speakers and lots of invited guests in the exhibition rooms and the reception tent afterwards:

                    

       

         

We’ll be back with more images from the exhbition itself.

Last Thursday, we opened our new temporary exhibition Split and Splice: Fragments From the Age of Biomedicine (Danish: Del and Hel: Brudstykker fra biomedicinens tid) here at Medical Museion. In the next couple of days, we will hopefully be able to upload some images from the opening (depends on when Benny has sorted out the hundreds of pictures he took).

Until then — why did we make this particular exhibition? The decision actually goes back five years in time, to the spring of 2004, when we were beginning to restructure the old medical-historical museum here in Copenhagen — a task we were thinking of in three ways:

First, we wanted to integrate the practice of a museum (cultural heritage and exhibition making) with the logic of the university (which is research and teaching), in order to emphasise that a university museum like ours is a site of museological experimentation, a place where we do research in new theories and methods for museum science communication.

Second, we wanted to understand what is going on in medicine today — the recent merger between basic biological science, medicine and information technology. And third, we wanted to transcend the usual narrative and didactic exhibition practice which was (and still is) so common in museums of science, technology and medicine. We wanted to highlight the stunning visual and material culture of medicine. We wanted to focus on the immediacy and presence of the clinic and the laboratory (the phenomenology of biomedicine if you want) rather than just explaining and contextualising the results of biomedical science — something that other media can do much better. We simply believed that a more conscious aesthetic approach opens up for a stronger emotional engagement with the world of science.

We were so fortunate that a private research foundation (the Novo Nordisk Foundation) found these ideas interesting and realistic. So for the last four years, we have run a combined research, collecting and exhibition project — called ‘Biomedicine on Display’ — to explore aspects of the visual and material culture of contemporary biomedicine.

The research output of these four project years can be read in a growing series of articles in international scholarly journals (and hopefully, an anthology in 2010). The result of the collecting effort is a growing number of exciting, peculiar and evocative artefacts in our storage facilities here in the museum. And the public outreach, finally, has resulted in a number of exhibitions over the last three years — first, Oldetopia and 100 Light Years then Design4Science, and now Split and Splice.

To strengthen the experimental and aesthetic approach to biomedical culture, we asked Canadian artist and designer Martha Fleming, who has a strong interest in science and science museums, to be lead curator. I had met Martha at a conference in Paris in 2001, we then met occasionally over the years after, and in 2007 we organised a workshop and a conference about biomedicine, art and aesthetics here in Copenhagen. It was therefore quite natural to ask Martha to supervise our group of post-doc fellows in the ‘Biomedicine on Display’-project (Susanne Bauer, Sniff Andersen Nexø, Jan Eric Olsén and Søren Bak-Jensen) and transform them into a team of exhibition curators.

This also meant that we took the full consequence of our current search for new forms for public communication of medical science in a museum context. Split and Splice is not a historical or a didactic medical science exhibition — it is a 250 m2 sci-art installation. In other words, there are very few explanations and attributions of meaning in textual form, instead there is a strong focus on the material and visual presence of contemporary medical science.

Whether you will like it or not probably depends on what you expect from an exhibition in a medical museum. If you’re looking for explicit historical contextualizations and explanations for contemporary biomedicine, you would probably be disappointed. But if you are willing to let your mind and senses be stimulated by material surfaces, forms, colours, unexpected juxtapositions of artefacts, etc. you will hopefully like it.

As I said, we will get back with images from the opening and selected rooms and installations. We also intend to bring comments from visitors and others, and clippings from press reviews.

The big news in US health politics this week was that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Salmonella as a food stuff. Hundreds of food manufacturers have been busy reorienting the production lines for this fabulous new market possibility, for example these brand new Salmonella-enriched cereals:

Read more in The Onion here.

Tilli Tansey — historian of contemporary medicine, a specialist in oral history, and the prime mover behind the famous Wellcome Witness Seminar series — will give her inaugural lecture as newly appointed professor at UCL on Monday 9 March 2009 @ 6.30 pm (Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre, London). The lecture is titled ’Models and Mechanisms: Aspects of Biomedicine at UCL in the Twentieth Century’ and will be followed by a reception in the Roberts Foyer.

Just received a reminder about nominations for this year’s Dibner Award for Excellence in Museum Exhibits.

The award was established in 1985 to recognize excellence in museums and museum exhibits that interpret the history of technology, industry, and engineering to the general public.

The jury pays special attention to good design and production, of course, but also to whether the exhibition raises pertinent historical issues: “Artifacts and images should be used in a manner that interests, teaches, and stimulates both the general public and historians”.

Deadline for nominations is 1 April; then the award committee choses a shortlist of finalists, the exhibition is reviewed on site, and finally the lucky winner gets a plaque and up to $1,000 to cover expenses for a curator to accept the award at the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) awards banquet in the autumn.

It’s high time for historians and curators of medical technology and medical engineering to make their work visible in this award context. Because not a single one of the winning exhbitions of the last 15 years have related to the history of medical technology and medical engineering (see the list here)!

Why? Either the Dibner Award jurys haven’t acknowledged medical technology and engineering as part of the field (which I find hard to believe). Or curators of medical technology and engineering haven’t produced any interesting exhibitions. Or what?

Over and over again I’ve praised Derek Lowe’s blog ‘In the Pipeline’ (see for example here). Derek delivers almost daily insights into the world of drug research, from chemical lab work routines to Big Pharma management and economics.

Yesterday’s post (‘A cure for the common cold …’) is a fine comment on the problematic quality of pharma communication on the mass media. I quote in extenso (hoping that Derek doesn’t sue me for infringing his copyright :-):

If you want a good example of the way that the popular media handle a drug discovery story, take a look at all the headlines this morning on the news of the sequencing of the common-cold rhinoviruses.

There are a couple of “Cure For the Common Cold Unlikely” ones, but most of the others seem to regard this as a big step forward. “Cure May Be Found”, “Getting Closer” , “May Lead to Cure”, “Could Help to Cure” – that’s the sort of thing. The problem is, how many viral diseases can we cure? I mean, really cure with drugs after a person’s been infected, wipe out and make go away? Right. Do I hear a zero? Viral diseases can be very difficult to get a handle on, because there aren’t many moving parts in there. If none of them are amenable to small-molecule drug approaches, people like me are pretty well out of the game.

The best chance you have with a viral infection is with a vaccine. But what this genomics work is telling us, actually, is that a vaccine is going to be rather hard to come by. This paper sequenced ninety-nine different rhinovirus strains, and if there are that many, there are surely that many more. Or there will be, after the next cold season – just wait. These things are mutating all the time – which is, of course, why we get colds year after year. The team working on this project was able to bin the viral genomes into fifteen different classes, but what are we going to do, develop fifteen different (and simultaneous) vaccines? Against a scurrying, hopping, moving target like this one?

No, this is very interesting work, and it’ll tell us a lot about how viruses do their nasty viral business out in the real world. But I wouldn’t start throwing around the “C” word. All that can do is disappoint people, I’m afraid.

In today’s online issue of Computerworld, Mike Elgan makes a convincing argument for the break-through of the e-book. What will propel the so far failing e-book into a strong market position, he believes, is Amazon’s awaited release of the Kindle platform on mobiles. Elgan’s six arguments, especially that of the deepening recession and the mobile habits of youngsters, are compelling. “By this time next year, e-books will be totally mainstream”, Elgan concludes. So when will we see the first academic medical history e-book on iPhone? My bet is February 2012.