October 2009

The other day, I lamented the fact that any new idea I developed about museums apparently was preempted by Nina Simon (or so it felt when I read she had already suggested the notion of the ‘slow museum’).  I felt like Professor Otto Lidenbrock who exclaimed “Arne Saknussem, always Arne Saknussem”, every time he succeeded to reach a new outpost on his way through the underworld and found that the Icelandic medieval alchemist had already been there (in my favourite Jules Verne novel A Journey to the Centre of the Earth; now in a new translation with a scholarly introduction by Jane Smiley).

Well, my Lidenbrockian feeling of beeing scooped has now shifted object of transference, from Nina Simon to Jim Bennett at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, who has just opened, of all things, an art exhibition on steampunk.

Well? Didn’t we have a discussion about steampunk in museums on this blog in early September? And now Jim opens an exhibition about it!?  “Parallel trajectories, as usual”, Jim replies when confronted with this remarkable coincidence.

But of course he’s right — and generous, since we all know that exhibitions take months, sometimes years to prepare. So Jim and his colleagues were there long before us. Jim Bennett, always Jim Bennett.

Anyway, the new exhibit at the Museum of History of Science in Oxford is titled “STEAMPUNK — the first museum exhibition of steampunk art”. It opened Tuesday and will run until 21 February, 2010. See further: www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/steampunk,  www.steampunkmuseumexhibition.blogspot.com, and www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/broadsheet9.pdf

Can’t wait to see it.

BioSystems — the blog of a new venture-capital supported biotech upstart Plectix that specializes in representing cellular signalling — reinforces my impression over the last couple of years that privately employed scientists too can use the blog medium to say increasingly interesting things about what used to be the turf of public university scholars in the social sciences and humanities (‘science studies‘ and ‘philosophy of science‘). For example, last December, Isha Antani addressed the perennial problem of the trade-off between competition and co-operation among life scintists.

I’m currently on paternal leave with 1-year old Johanna — which means that my blogging activities are structured after her sleeping schedule. And to save time we share lunch table and working desk:

Last Friday, Medical Museion participated, as usual, in the annual Copenhagen Night of Culture. We had 1326 visitors — a little fewer than last year — passing through the entrance door to view our permanent and temporary exhibitions. The decrease in the number of visitors is not a bad thing though — because it gave us better time to speak with them as individuals. Below are a few images from Friday night (taken from Bente’s post in Danish on Museionblog, therefore the Danish captions):

In the last two years, the Office of History at the National Institutes of Health has grown and changed into one of the major players in studies of contemporary history of biomedicine. In 2007 the Office got a new director, Robert Martensen who has a combined medical and historical background; last year, historian of 20th century cancer research, David Cantor, was recruited as Deputy Director and Senior Research Historian; and not long time ago they launched a new website (pretty NIH’ish look, but fills the necessary informative function well).

Martensen and Cantor are also expanding the postdoc programme. Currently, seven postdocs are associated with the Office — Eric Boyle (history of alternative and complementary medicine at NIH); Todd Olszewski (history of risk factors in terms of cholesterol and cardiovascular health); Laura Stark (history of NIH policies in ethics of human subject research); Doogab Yi (history of NIH research in cancer viruses); Chin Jou (history of obesity); Brian Casey (NIH, neurophysiology, and criminal culpability); Sharon Ku (nanotechnology and cancer).

And now they looking for #8, with a nicely vague mandate:

The Fellow will conduct research on topics of their choice under the supervision of senior staff of the Office of NIH History and assisted by contacts in the relevant Institute(s). The Fellow will be expected to participate in historical activities on campus, including presentation of one or more seminars and lectures.

Deadline 31. december — more info here.

… hvordan skal det fortolkes:

(fra http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/)

The four-year ‘Biomedicine on Display’ project, funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, is closing down this autumn. Most of the junior staff have left for other jobs. The external steering group has approved the evaluation report (with acclamation). Here’s an updated publication list from the project.

For dem der ikke hørte det — vores egen Jesper Vaczy Kragh var i ‘Sundhed på P1’ igår og talte om det hvide snit. Læs og lyt her.

Too often during the last couple of years, when I believe I’ve come up with something new and creative with respect to museums, it turns out that Nina Simon has already been there. I feel like professor Otto Lidenbrock in Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth: “Arne Saknussemm, always Arne Saknussemm!”.

Take for example the idea of ‘the slow museum’. A good idea that came to me last night. About exhibits that don’t address all five senses simultaneously. That don’t pack the rooms with 1001 artefacts. With few, but exquisite objects for contemplation. No unnecessary distractions. No excessive spotlights. Keeping the accompanying text down to a minimum. And no interactives, please!

Well, of course Nina has thought in terms of the ‘slow museum’ too — in a tweet from 30 January.

On the other hand, her tweet is only a phrase-drop, she doesn’t include any analysis, no examples. So it’s time to roll out the idea of the slow museum. Hang on!

When I was a student, announcement boards — with flyers for conferences, graduate courses, seminars, new books etc. — were centrepieces in the hallways of Academia.

In many departments they still are. Like this well-groomed one in the Dept of Philosophy at the University of Leeds (where I visited to give two talks last May).

But with all these emerging new social web media, will the academic announcement board have a future?

Well, maybe not if you think in terms of the board above. Seen without people in front of it, it could as well be substituted with a Facebook dashboard. But what about this:

(from here)

This image (from the University of Kaunas, Lithuania) illustrates the fact that a physical announcement board allows you to touch the news of the academic world, even touch them together. Touching news together (even if it’s news in text and image format) is an entirely different social experience than viewing the news on a screen.