In museums of science and medicine, a ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t apply. Each institution cobbles together its programs based on its own universe of collections, values and interests, staff members, patrons, spaces, and other factors. This presentation addresses three conference themes in the context of the Office of History at the National Institutes of Health (USA).

1) How can museums use older collections together with new acquisitions from contemporary medicine? NIH museum collecting began in the 1980s and concentrates on objects from the post war period with some memorabilia from NIH predecessor agencies that date to the late 19th c. Many objects are laboratory instruments from the 1950s to the present, including prototypes of early biomedical computers, biochemical models, chemical analysis machines, and other scientific/technical objects. A few PowerPoint slides from two exhibits currently in development suggest how the Office of History is incorporating these materials. One exhibit focuses on the career of Marshall Nirenberg, a scientist who received a Nobel Prize for his elucidation of RNA. The other exhibit traces the development of prosthetic heart valves from the 1940s to the present.

2: What acquisition methods allow museums to keep up with developments in contemporary biomedicine? The amount of historically significant material that large organizations generate is staggering. NIH has an annual budget of approximately $30 billion (USD) divided between ‘intramural’ research, most of which is conducted by government staff in Bethesda, MD, and ‘extramural’ research that takes place in US universities and research groups around the world. In order to provide an historical record of one new extramural program—Clinical Translational Science Awards (CTSAs)—the Office of History has begun a program to ‘crawl’ and preserve the web pages of the 40+ CTSAs currently operating in the U.S. Some PowerPoint slides illustrate the archival program.

3: How can curatorial work in museums draw on scholarship in the humanities and social sciences? Beginning in 2008, the Office of History expanded its post-doctoral fellowship program through partnerships with individual institutes of NIH. Post-doctoral fellows in history and social studies of science are generally funded for two years, during which 80% of their time is devoted to their own research projects on the history of a biomedical topic in which NIH has played a significant role or the administrative history of NIH. 20% of their time is spent in service work in the Office of History. Currently, the Office of History has seven Fellows in residence, and this presentation briefly outlines their topics and modes of participation in Museum and Archival activities.

Back to EAMHMS list of absracts