Biomedicine on Display

Medicine and health are too important subjects to be left to scientists only. That is one of the main ideas behind the Wellcome Collection of London. All their exhibitions are medical, but they are never just medical. There is always something more. Like the ’War and Medicine’ exhibition which was accompanied by art video installations of wounded soldiers in Afghanistan.

Last week we hosted an informal seminar with senior curator James Peto and event manager Lisa Jamieson of the Wellcome Collection. One of the topics was the relationship between scientific research and public engagement in a museum context. As head of Wellcome Collections Public Programmes Team Ken Arnold said: “Research should be publicly relevant and public relations should be research rich.”

Another discussion was about how we use our senses in the exhibition. Sounds, smells and visuals have an important part to play in the modern museum. Events were the museum objects are brought back to life, or art works that challenge our formalized understandings of what goes on in the human body, are some of the ways to engage the visitors. Another is to use the web media; live streaming surgery or engaging in online discussions. Or blog about what goes on behind the scenes …

Watch video from the seminar here: http://www.youtube.com/user/medicalmuseion?feature=mhum

Even though the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is heading towards its ultimate death, it is still organising some pretty interesting seminars. For example, Maximilian Stadler’s (MPI-WG, Berlin) talk, titled ‘Cerebro-centrism and the History of the Neurosciences’, on Thursday 13 May at 4pm:

‘Surely the rising star of body parts in the 1980s’, historian Elaine Showalter noted in 1987, must have been the brain. Its rising star – largely, of course, thanks to the impressive expansions of the neurosciences ever since – then also made coalesce a field of historical scholarship which usually, and perhaps a bit too sloppily, is labeled just that: the history of the neurosciences. Timely enough an endeavor it is; histories of the neurosciences, however, are hard to come by in the history of the neurosciences. In a sense, no such histories yet exist. What exists, more properly, are cultural histories of the brain: stories of its cultural meanings, the social malleability of concepts, and the historicity and historical specificity of brain-centred discourses and practices.

The brain is indeed hardly a surprising choice of subject matter for the history of neuroscience; but, as I am going to argue in this talk, it is a historiographically far from unproblematic one. The case against the casual conflation of a history of the neurosciences with that of the brain I am going to develop by way of detour through the case of cybernetics – a particularly cerebral, and insufficiently problematized, vision of the neuroscientific past.

On my reading, the centrality accorded to cybernetics in historical accounts of mid-twentieth century neuroscientific developments is, more than anything else, a function of the public and intellectual visibility of cybernetics. As such, it is symptomatic of the broader, cerebro-centric tendency that is the subject of this talk: at best, the tendency to obscure crucial spaces of inquiry that are indeed all-too-easily glossed over in the necessarily manifold origins of neuroscience – devoid as they were, as I shall suggest, of the brain, of ‘culture’, and the philosophical excitement cybernetics once generated; at worst, the tendency to conflate cultural histories of the brain, of the mind-body problem, and of discourses of human nature with the diverse and, more often than not, quite mundane nature of neuroscientific advances.

I just got a mail saying that the Canada Science and Technology Museum is organising a summer institute in material culture research on the theme ‘Reading Artefacts’, in Ottawa, 16-20 August.

Anyone interested in material research and museum artefacts — grad students, postdocs, faculty “teaching history through artifacts” and historians who are “looking to expand their research methods” — are welcome to attend. Because of the venue, there will probably be a lot of focus on sci, tech and med museum artefacts.

Great initative. My only hesitation is the title — Reading Artefacts. What do the organisers actually mean by reading an artefact?

In my understanding of reading, there is a text to be read. But an artefact is not a text (unless there is a label glued on to it), so there is nothing to read.

The only way I can make sense of the title is that they use the verb ‘read’ metaphorically. That is, they probably don’t believe that an artefact is a literal text which is read like the text you are reading now. What they probably mean is that curators and historians engage with artefacts in a way that is analogous to the way readers read texts, and they use the verb ‘read’ as a short-hand for this analogy.

But how useful is it to think about our engagement with artefacts in analogy with reading texts? Granted, it may be useful as a rhetorical device, or for science journalism purposes. But I’m afraid the analogy is counterproductive from a scholarly point of view, because it draws one’s attention away from the epistemologically thorny issues at stake:

How do we actually engage with material artefacts? How do we make sense of them? How do they actually influence us? Is there any kind of seimotic interaction going on between humans and dead material things, or is it ‘merely’ physical interaction?

In other words, ‘reading artefacts’ is not one of those metaphors that curators ‘live by’. On the contrary, I suggest it’s one of those metaphors that kills the curatorial imagination.

That said, however, the course looks very useful; it will give the participants an opportunity to:

• investigate artifacts, trade literature and photographic collections as resources for research, teaching, and the public presentation of history
• work with leading collection scholars in a national museum setting to explore material culture methodologies and approaches
• use artifacts as the centre of discussion and hands-on activities
• immerse themselves in a material culture perspective of the technological past
• learn the basics of conservation, cataloguing and developing collections in local environments – a growing and essential resource for history studies.

Tuition fee is 250 Can. $ for students, 350 for postdocs and 450 for faculty and professionals (but it includes breaks, lunches, and a field trip; and students can get some financial support). Register here before 16 June, but do it long before then, because they can only accomodate 30 participants. Further info from Anna Adamek, aadamek@technomuses.ca. One can also join the Google Group here.

Just saw the early spring Monday seminar program at UCL’s STS department. I like the nice British analytical touch to it. Much more interesting than the usual fashionable Latouresque ANTsemiotics and other STS’ese sociolects. For example:

• Jeremy Howick, ‘When can we trust the experts? Defending the Evidence Based Medicine stance’, 25 January
• David Healy, ‘They used to call it Medicine’, 1 February
• Sam Schweber, ‘Writing the Biography of Hans Bethe’, 8 February
• Jane Gregory, ‘Producing the post-Fordist public, or: What is Science Communication for in a post-industrial society?’, 22 February
• Helena Sheehan, ‘What (if anything) has Marxism to contribute to science studies?’, 8 March
• Jeff Hughes, ‘Before the bomb: on writing the history of unclear physics’, 22 March

Wish I were in London more often, would love to discuss production of a post-Fordic public or hear Jeff unfold his ideas about ’unclear physics’ (no typo, it’s an intended joke, says Jon Agar, who sent the programme around).

We are of course not the only museum that struggles with how to juggle art, science, materiality and medicine in our exhibitions. Next Friday, 4 December, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at University of Cambridge is organising a most interesting afternoon symposium titled ‘Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination’.

Curators and artistic contributors to MAA’s current experimental exhibition with the same name will explore techniques of investigation and presentation — including relationships between the body and material things, the potential of exhibitions as research projects, incorporating different sensory engagements in museum display, and accommodating multiple audiences.

After an opportunity to see the current exhibition there will be four presentations:

Anita Herle, ‘Exploring the body in the arts, social and bio-medical sciences’:

How do we know, experience and create different bodies? How have different bodies been imagined, known and acted upon in different times, places and disciplinary contexts? This presentation will examine the creative potential and challenges associated with curatorial techniques of assemblage and juxtaposition.

Mark Elliott, ‘Putting the pieces together: negotiating parts and wholes in Assembling Bodies’:

Exhibits about the measurement, classification and distribution of bodies highlight ways in which fragments, measurements or representations can ’stand’ in for larger categories or entities, such as body, type, or human. This paper considers how the curators negotiated the relationship between parts and wholes, highlight the contingency as well as the potency of some of the technologies that make bodies visible.

Jocelyne Dudding, ‘Shifting images: Using ‘anthropometric’ photographs in museum display’:

This paper discusses the historic use of ‘anthropometric’ photography in the collecting and classifying of information of human bodies. It explores how anthropometric methods of photography were followed in some instances, and resisted or ignored in others, why other photographs were recontextualised and used as ‘anthropometric’, and how contemporary artists have responded to such classification.

Bonnie Kemske, ‘Capturing the Embrace: a sculptural engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s ‘lived experience’:

The inclusion of ceramic ‘hugs’ in Assembling Bodies challenges the dominance of the visual within exhibitions, makes us question our perceptions, and leads us to a more engaged understanding of personal relationships to art. Capturing the embrace as ‘cast hugs’ engages the body’s sense of touch as a way to merge the body as subject with the sculptural object: ‘… not the thing on its own, but the experience of the thing.’ [Merleau-Ponty 1962]

Admission is free, but spaces are limited. Mail liz.haslemere@maa.cam.ac.uk to reserve a place. If it wasn’t for the damned carbon footprint I would be tempted to fly Easyjet Cph-Stansted-Cph for a one-day trip. Why not videocast the presentations?

Nina Simon, best known for her awesome museum 2.0 blog, is visiting Medical Museion tomorrow to give a lunch seminar on her ideas on the participatory museum. Her visit fits very well into our current plans for engaging both the health sector and the public in re-organising the collections and permanent exhibitions — more about these plans in the next couple of weeks. If someone wants to attend, send Carsten a mail (holt@sund.ku.dk).

Just to let you know, on 12 May art historian Robert Zwijnenberg is giving a talk at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin about “How to Depict Life. A Short History of the Imagination of Human Interiority”. Here is the exciting abstract:

From 14th-century pictorial efforts to the images produced by visualization technologies, such as fMRT, the depiction of human interiority has always also been a struggle to depict and understand life itself. But how to depict interiority in such a way that life itself becomes understandable? This question was as much a problem for the anatomist of early modern times as it is for the 21st-century molecular bioscientist.

The talk will take place at 7.30 pm in the Akademiegebäude am Gendarmenmarkt, Leibniz-Saal Markgrafenstraße 38, Berlin.

Historians of medicine are grudgingly beginning to acknowledge the changing media habits in the population — that is, why read a book or a journal article when you can see a streaming video on the web instead?

To prepare the scholarly community for the new media age, the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL is organizing a workshop on ’History of Medicine in Motion’, Tuesday 26 May 2009:

The internet is rapidly transforming the boundaries of what is considered serious scholarly material, and allowing for a broader dissemination of findings than has hitherto been possible in history. The increased video saturation among new generation of students has been both a cause for alarm and excitement among academics as they note the decreased attention span of students for print literature on the one hand, and the potential for making their materials more immediately accessible on the other.

Grad students and university staff are invited to submit 3-5 minute video clips and podcasts on any subject within the history of medicine. The workshop will be led by Shigehisa Kuriyama (Harvard), Hal Cook (UCL) and Asher Tlalim (National Film and Television School). For those who don’t know how to make movies there will also be a one-day training session on 6 March, where participants will learn to use iMovie, Keynote and Garageband.

Excellent inititative. My only caveat: it’s not just ‘new generations of students’ who are changing their media habits; many old hawks like me are also saturated with new media.

Jens Hauser has just written to tell us that SymbioticA’s next Biotech Art workshop takes place in Stavanger, 18-21 November 2008 (part of the Stavanger ARTICLE BIENNALE 15-30 November. The workshop will accommodate 15 participants to learn techniques of microbiology, DNA extraction, genetic transformation of bacteria, gel electrophoresis, tissue culture and embryo rescue. More here.

Last week, ten representatives of the major medical historical collections and museums in the Nordic and Baltic countries — i.e., Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden — gathered for a two-day meeting in Uppsala, Sweden, with three aims in mind:

• to create a network between individuals and institutions in the Baltic-Nordic region about the development of medical and medical history museums.
• to identify important issues of common interest, like joint exhibitions, teaching programmes, acquisition projects, joint research projects, fund-raising, new museum development plans, etc.
• to discuss the best ways of strengthening the cooperation between Baltic-Nordic medical and medical history museums, university programmes for the history of medicine and medical science studies, and other regional and international professional organizations.

In an introductory three-hour roundtable we got an overview of the richness and variety of the historical collections, research programmes, exhibition projects and outreach activities in the medical museums in the region.

Lisa Mouwitz presented the Medical History Museum in Gothenburg, Sweden, a general history of medicine and health museum which is organisationally a part of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

Maie Toomsalu told us about the collection management, research and outreach activities at the University of Tartu Medical Collections.

Morten Skydsgaard and Olav Hamran (behind) from the Steno Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, and the Norwegian Technical Museum in Oslo, respectively, shared their experiences of creating popular exhibitions for the general public about, for example, reproductive technologies.

Juris Salaks presented the rich collections and manifold activities of the Paul Stradin Museum in Riga, Latvia.

Ramunas (’Ray’) Kondratas, formerly curator of medical history at the National Museum of American History (Washington, DC), now retired in Lithuania, gave an overview of the two museums in Kaunas and Vilnius.

Anna Thorbjörg Torgrimsdottir told us about the exciting plans for an entirely new medical history museum in Iceland, close to the present Nesstofa in Seltjarnarnes outside Reykjavik.

Sigurd Sandmo, from The Leprosy Museum (part of Bergen City Museum), Norway, explained, among other things, how local lepra museums are engaged in an international co-operative network.

Finally, the writer of this humble post (who also held the camera) did his best to give an impression of what we are doing here at Medical Museion in Copenhagen.

(Unfortunately Henna Sinisalo from the Helsinki University Museum (Arppeanum), couldn’t attend the meeting).

The meeting was hosted by Kerstin Hulter Åsberg, County Council of Uppsala, one of the co-founding bodies of the Medical History Museum in Uppsala. We also found time to visit this gem of a museum. where we were met by the chairman of the museum board, Henry Johansson, and its director, Eva Ahlsten.

The next network meeting is planned to be held in Kaunas and/or Vilnius. Lithuania, in the autumn of 2009.

For further information about the new network, contact either Kerstin Hulter Åsberg (kerstin.hulter.asberg@lul.se) or me (Thomas Söderqvist, ths@sund.ku.dk).

We all know how babies can be conceived in test-tubes, that we can clone eggs in petri dishes, and that embryos can be stored in the freezer. Old-fashioned sex is increasingly substituted with artificial conception. But what does a leading bio-artist and art historian think of all this? Suzanne Anker from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, gives a seminar in Cambridge on Tuesday (HPS Dept, Free School Lane at 5pm), asking questions like:

When posed with the classic quandary, where do babies come from, will the mythology of life’s creation soon also include glassware and the bio-lab? Has the bundle-carrying stork been exiled from fairy-tales? And with the bio-printing of replacement organs and tissues on the research horizon, at what cost is this further quest for immortality?

Suzanne wrote The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age (with Dorothy Nelkin in 2004), so she’s well placed to opine on this interesting technoscientific field.

The emergence of evidence-based medicine is one of the most interesting issues in the history of contemporary medical history. Wish I were in Stockholm on Monday 3 November when Ingemar Bohlin from the STS Section at the University of Gothenburg will speak about evidence-based decision making in a science-based society and the origin, distribution and limits of the ‘evidence movement’ in an afternoon seminar at the Nobel Museum. Ingemar will reconstruct four strands of historical development that together led to current evidence-based medicine, and describe the relations between them in order to throw light on procedures for contemporary knowledge production. Write to bokning@nobel.se if you want to participate; a background text is available. More info from Paul Sjöblom, paul.sjoblom@nobel.se.

The Art|Sci Center at University of California, Los Angeles, organizes a ‘Body Art Disease’-symposium on 6 November, featuring presentations, exhibitions, installations, roundtables, social gatherings, curated talk, and tours in the vaults of UCLA’s Special Collections. Participants include a number of interesting and creative people: Philip Beesley (University of Waterloo), Jill Scott (The Neurobiological Lab at the Institute of Zoology, University of Zürich), Phillip Warnell (Warwick University, UK), Susan Kozel (SMARTlab Digital Media Institute at the University of East London), Barbara Drucker (Art, UCLA), AJ Willcocks (Australia), Virocode (Peter D’Auria and Andrea Mancuso) and Caitlin Berrigan (MIT). More info here.

MR-neuroimaging and other methods for studying brain function have been used for some time now to provide criminal defence evidence in courtrooms, at least in the US. But how does neurowiring relate to classical judicial concepts like ‘intent’ and ‘responsiblity’? Can neuroscience offer excuses for criminal activity? The Triple Helix Cambridge (www.camtriplehelix.com) organizes a debate about recent adances in neuroscience and the law, next Tuesday, 21 October. Raymond Tallis, Nikolas Rose (BIOS Centre, LSE) and Ian Treasaden (Forensic Neuroscience, Imperial College) will give short presentations followed by questions from and discussions with the floor. More on Facebook here. 

A recent announcement for a lecture by Tim Hunt, joint winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain tomorrow, Thursday 9 October, reminded me of the problems with using scientists as sources for biographical stories.

Tim Hunt will be talking about the inspirations behind his life in science. Says the announcement:

It was in his weekly science lesson at the Dragon School near Oxford that Tim grew to find biology an easy subject, and from then on he felt he never really had to make any more career decisions. When he was 14, Tim moved to another school where science played a much larger role in the curriculum. He loved Chemistry in particular, and the class were allowed considerable freedom, on more than one occasion started fires from distilling volatile flammable solvents.

Well, this may be true. Or it may not. It’s difficult to say, because autobiographical stories are notoriously problematic as sources of what ‘really’ happened, for example what was ’really’ the inspirations behind someone’s life in science. Having written the biography of another (then still living) medical Nobel laureate (Niels K. Jerne) I know all to well how shaky autobiographical reports turn out to be when you are able to compare them with the written record. By and large, autobiography is better understood as a fictional genre.

That said, autobiographical stories can be great fun and good entertainment. And like great novels, they can be used as ‘mirrors’ for us to compare ourselves in. For that purpose it doesn’t really matter if they are true or not.

So from that point of view the lecture at the Royal Institution could be interesting. In London tomorrow at 7pm — find it here.