February 2011

Two weeks ago I mentioned that the Museums Journal had published Ken Arnolds and my Dogme 95-style manifesto for creating science, technology and medicine exhibitions, first presented last September at a conference organised by Medical Museion in Copenhagen. We have now received the journal’s permission to publish the full version of the manifesto. Enjoy and/or criticize!

Just over 15 years ago, Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg spearheaded Dogme 95, a manifesto to purify the art of film-making.

The aim was to engage audiences more profoundly and make sure they weren’t distracted by over-production. The Dogme manifesto ruled out special effects, post-production changes and other tricks in order to focus on the story and the performances.

Since then, writers, theatre directors and other arts practitioners have all found inspiration in Dogme 95’s back-to-basics philosophy. Dogme has been criticised, as have some of the films made according to its rules, but as exhibition producers, this classic vow of chastity has inspired us as a way of guiding and sharpening the creative practice of making science, technology and medicine exhibitions.

These rules have been written and published with almost indecent speed. They are deliberately provocative prompts for further discussion. This manifesto is not a definitive set of working proposals, but a draft, which will no doubt be modified and sharpened through challenge and feedback.

And anyone who knows the institutions we are based at will be aware that the exhibitions we have presided over have often not followed one or more of these rules.

This manifesto is almost reference-free, but this does not mean we think the ideas are purely our own. There are vast bodies of literature on science communication, exhibition making, art history and museology; we have read some of this literature and been influenced by it. We also have learned much from the museums we have visited.

1. Exhibitions should be research-led, not a form of dissemination

Curators should use exhibitions to find things out (for themselves and for their visitors) and not just regurgitate what is already known. Good curators are inspired and imaginative researchers who find and then build on the investigations of experts and colleagues, juxtaposing varied understandings about their chosen topic. They add their own insights and gradually come up with new ideas and perspectives.

2. A scientist should always be involved in the exhibition, a technologist if it is about technology

Don’t shy away from drawing on real expertise in interpreting a topic or finding exhibits. But this is not to say that the aim of the exhibition is simply to give voice to the views of these experts. They are not, nor should they be encouraged to see themselves as, the curators, but it is vital that their perspectives are present in the final exhibition.

3. Be clear about exhibitions being “multi-authored”

Exhibitions emerge from curatorial collaborations between experts and designers. But a show’s funders, the institutional context and other stakeholders have a bearing on the final outcome; it should be possible for exhibition visitors to find out about these influences.

The project teams who make exhibitions deserve to be credited. Those responsible for the show not only need to take a bow, they also need to be held responsible for its contents and impact.

4. Use only original material

Exhibitions should engage audiences with original material rather than reproductions and props. If you cannot illustrate a topic with original artefacts, images and documents, ask yourself if an exhibition is the best way to make the point. Models, replicas and reproductions can be shown, but only if this is the point of showing them.

Reproductions of artworks should not be used, unless the work’s natural medium is “facsimile” – for example, digital photographs. The use of scientific and medical images raises complicated questions, such as what is the “original” format of a microscopic image of a cell?

Most scientific images today are minted as digital data, and their final appearance invariably owes much to enhancements and cropping. How this material should be displayed and labelled needs consideration. It is often better to leave it out all together.

5. Never show ready-made science

Focus on the processes of science: science in the making; the triumph of discovery; the frustration and blind alleys explored along the way. Also, look at the social and cultural processes of scientific ideas becoming accepted and embedded.

6. Jealously guard a place for mystery and wonder

Exhibitions provide opportunities to explore topics in ways that bring new light to sometimes forgotten or less-well understood aspects of medicine, science, technology and their histories. But this urge to demystify subjects should not be allowed to render exhibitions earnestly didactic.

Deliberately include some exhibits about which less, rather than more, is known – curious exhibits that just cannot completely be accounted for. Visitors should leave exhibitions wanting to find out more.

7. Reject most exhibition ideas

Exhibitions represent the meeting point between subjects and material culture, and can be approached from either end – themes or objects first, or a mixture of the two. But often, topics that seem promising will not be worth developing because there simply aren’t good enough objects with which to explore or support them.

Similarly, many areas of material culture end up just not being interesting enough to make a show about. Too often, exhibitions are made from empty ideas of stupid objects. It is worth searching for a topic and a set of objects that harmoniously amplify and mutually enrich each other.

8. Leave out as much as possible

Less is usually more in exhibitions. Visitors will remember and enjoy looking at 10 carefully chosen things more than a 100 that are reasonably well selected.

The most important aspect of an exhibition is its outer boundaries, which keep out the mass of distractions that lie beyond. In the digital era, a core value of a museum exhibition is that it makes its point through displaying a few selected original objects.

9. Embrace the showbusiness of exhibitions

Audiences come to exhibitions in their leisure time and deserve to be lifted out of themselves. They will respond to the drama of the best exhibits, displays, design, writing and lighting.

Make sure that all of this is done well and given the greatest polish. This will enhance the presence of the objects and the impact of the ideas. Don’t be ashamed to admit that making exhibitions is, in part, a matter of putting on a show.

10. Celebrate the ephemeral quality of exhibitions

Catalogues, web-presence and filmed versions of exhibitions can lengthen the shadows cast by exhibitions, but they will never come close to keeping alive the actual experience of visiting a show.

This is an important part of the magic of exhibitions. Like good pieces of theatre, they gain much of their energy by being around for a limited time and then disappearing. The fact that they are time-limited gives their makers a degree of freedom to experiment and be daring. Grasp it!

11. Make exhibitions true to the geography of their venues

The principle is that knowledge is “situated” – the context in which we contemplate and acquire it can seem as important as the ideas or facts themselves. Exhibition makers need to think hard about how to work with the “place” of an exhibition.

Consider what is lost in touring an exhibition where the subject becomes detached from the local context. The country, the city, the venue, the room, and the set and design of an exhibition, even the showcases and the orientation of individual objects – all have a bearing on the meanings that audiences derive from them.

12. Avoid artificial lighting

Use natural light where possible. Start with the light available and build up from it. If possible, reveal the windows and keep the doors open. Let the natural layout of the building be apparent, make it clear where you have introduced false walls. This will enable visitors to keep a sense of where they are.

And don’t fall into the trap of imagining that the background for an exhibition has either to be a neutral black box or a pristine white cube. Ideally, a show should look and feel very different on a midsummer morning to a winter evening.

13. Always involve more than one sense

It is impossible for visitors to turn off their non-visual senses in an exhibition – they will hear, touch and smell things no matter what. So make sure that some of the tactile, audio, or olfactory experiences of an exhibition are curated. Exhibitions work by teasing their visitors into thinking that they could get close enough to what they see to touch it, even while making sure they don’t.

But curators should think about how to introduce at least a few objects that visitors can touch. Never use artificial sounds or odours, but try hard to find ways to enhance the audio and olfactory qualities of the original objects, getting visitors to use their ears and noses.

14. Make exhibitions for inquisitive adults

If you aim at educationally under-achieving primary school children, it will be impossible to engage anyone else (and you are unlikely to engage even your target audience). Many children and teenagers are keenly attracted to adult culture, but very few adults see the attraction of young material.

Never make exhibitions for educational purposes – other media and methods are more effective. It’s also worth bearing in mind that exhibitions are, by their nature, a “childish” medium, bringing out playfulness in all of us. This should be encouraged, but to focus deliberately on young audiences reaps diminishing returns.

15. Remember that visitors ultimately make their own exhibitions

Some visitors might not be interested in reading what the curators write, while others might not look at many objects. Some will be interested in aspects of a topic that the curators might not have come across.

Because of this, when an exhibition opens, it is only ever the second or third draft of an idea that will, through revision, reach maybe its eighth or ninth incarnation by the time it closes.

Exhibitions should be alive, and change is a vital part of life. Even in the most “stable” shows, lights will need adjusting and labels redrafting. An exhibit might even have to be removed or replaced. More radically, some exhibitions should be deliberately half-finished, or set up so that updates can be added halfway through.

16. Make exhibitions the jumping off place for further engagement

Good exhibitions are the point of departure for a longer relationship. The value of exhibitions should only partly be judged by analysing how many people come, how long they spent in a show and what they think of it. On this basis alone, most exhibitions are foolishly expensive ventures, particularly in these cash-strapped times.

Don’t forget that, just occasionally, exhibitions can really change visitors’ lives and this is worth a lot. Effective exhibitions can also bring in new objects to museums, have an impact on recruitment, add to shop sales, improve the organisation’s reputation, and provide a context for corporate celebrations. There is a virtual avalanche of cultural capital that can flow from them: this should be valued from the start.

17. Don’t be afraid to bend, break or reinvent the rules

The conference “Curiouser & Curiouser” at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, 28-30 March, aimed at PhD students, early career researchers and museum professionals, “will seek to challenge notions of normality and eccentricity in museums, galleries and heritage institutions”. In short, a conference on queer museums. See more here.

Why not attend a postgrad course on “Body images: gender inside/outside” in Paris with Lisa Cartwright, Adele Clarke and André Gunthert, 10-13 April:

The last few decades have witnessed rapid developments and innovations in visualization techniques. This is the case for a wide variety of visualization genres, whether in scientific fields, in the fashion industry or in the arts. There are, however, overlaps of style as well as techniques between different genres. As Lisa Cartwright notes, there is a symbiotic relationship between scientific and popular imaging technologies. In a similar vein, we find an interaction between art and science in the genre known as bio-art. In this PhD course/Research workshop we will explore images of relevance to the study of gendered bodies. This is an interdisciplinary course, and the concept of “body images” is to be understood in a broad sense, as transcending the categories of art and science, including art history.

 
More here. Application deadline: 20 February.

I’m not squeamish when it comes to sacrificing animals for food or for scientific purposes. But I don’t like Susan Jeiven’s taxidermic art class in the NY Observatory art space, “a bizarre Victorian hobby that transforms dead mice into miniature ‘humans'”, as the NY Post puts it (found it on Joanna Ebenstein’s FB wall).

Jeiven buys frozen mice from snake-feed stores, thaws them and sucks their blood out with a syringe. The art students then learn to clean out the intestines, remove the bones and use wires to set them in odd poses. Standard taxidermic techniques.

Maybe such “anthropomorphic taxidermy” was hip in high Victorian society. But that’s a hundred years ago. I don’t like this revival. I don’t mind displaying human remains, but don’t make art out of the evolutionary heritage, please! Actually, I don’t like taxidermy at all. I want some sacred space left.

There is a strong disciplinary element in science, which university politicians, research foundations and science managers prefer to emphasise.

What they usually don’t understand, but what most (younger) scientists know very well, is that there is also a strong playful and anarchistic dimension in scientific practice. Somewhat akin to the dichotomy between apollonian and dionysian.

A feature article in the last issue of The Scientist suggests that “creativity, do-it-yourself individualism, anti-establishmentarianism and attitude” make science more akin to punk music than most people would believe. Here are some quotes:

• “Punk ethos is typified by a passionate adherence to individualism, creativity and freedom of expression with no regard to established opinions … Good scientific discipline is also typified by such qualities, including inquisitiveness and curiosity, with no entrenchment to established beliefs”.
• Punk is “about the freedom to express what you want to express,” 
• Both punk and science also value individualism and are not always embraced by society: “In that sense, I think both of them have a subcultural aspect to them.”
• “We’re always looking for discoveries that challenge current thinking … Punk rock is like that, too”
• “Scientist or not, anyone with an open mind [and a] passion for life has the punk ethos.”

Agree. But this scientific attitude isn’t restricted to punk music. The world is full of cultural activities of that kind. A lot of modern art, for example. Experimental theatre. Much of contemporary writing. Not to speak of a whole array of political movements.

But — how do you make an exhibition about the dionysian element in science? How do you display an attitude with the help of material and visual objects?

Hjemmesiden og bloggen Open Access, som koordineres af Foreningen Danske Videnskabsredaktører, vil arbejde for “et afslappet forhold til Open Access”. Dvs. de synes ikke det er smart med open access og vil være en modvægt til de seneste års “overdrevne markedsføring” af open access fra bibliotekssektoren.

Den ene professions brødnid skal tydeligvis erstattes af den andens! Desuden forstår de ikke hvad sociale webmedier går ud på. Jeg læste en kommentar af Michael de Laine (“Journalister nødvendige for forskningsformidling trods Open Access”) — och kunne godt tænke mig at skrive en kritisk kommentar. Men niksen, biksen — man skal logge ind og oprette en konto for at kommentere på blogindlæggene!

Forget it, — den hjemmeside og blog bliver ikke langlivede.

Ken Arnold’s and my Dogme-style “manifesto” for creating science, technology and medicine exhibitions has just been published as a feature article in the last issue (#2/2011) of the Museums Journal.

We’ve been inspired by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who spearheaded the now 15 years old Dogme 95 manifesto for purifying the art of film-making. They wanted to engage audiences more profoundly and make sure viewers weren’t distracted by over-production, and therefore ruled out special effects, post-production changes, and other tricks in order to focus on the story and the performances.

Since then, writers, theatre directors and other arts practitioners have all found inspiration in Dogme 95’s back-to-basics philosophy. Surely, Dogme has been criticised, as have some of the films made according to its rules, but as exhibition producers, this classic vow of chastity has been an inspiration to us as a way of guiding and sharpening the creative practice of making science, technology and medicine exhibitions.

So last August we sat down to discuss the possibility of making a Dogme-inspired manifesto for museum exhibitions in our field. For example, could we translate the idea that ‘props and sets’ must not be brought onto a film set and that filming must be done on location? Actually, this was pretty easy to relocate in exhibition terms. Dogme 95’s determination that sounds in a film should not be produced apart from the visual aspect was also suggestive to us, as were the ‘commandments’ that filming must take place where the action takes place, that there should be no artificial lighting, and that the film takes place here and now.

Other Dogme 95 proposals prompted us fundamentally to disagree – for example, their insistence that the director of a film should not be credited (in contrast, we are very much in favour of the notion of the auteur in exhibition making). A number of the other rules that we have come up with more narrowly relate to exhibition making in the specific context we are concerned with.

Our museum rules are deliberately provocative prompts for further discussion. This manifesto is not a definitive set of working proposals, but a draft, which will no doubt be modified and sharpened through challenge and feedback. And anyone who knows the institutions we are based at (Wellcome Collection in London and Medical Museion in Copenhagen) will be aware that we have often not followed one or more of these rules.

Furthermore, this manifesto is almost reference-free. This does not mean we think the ideas are purely our own. There are vast bodies of literature on science communication, exhibition making, art history and museology; we have read some of this literature and been influenced by it. We also have learned much from other museums. For example, the Industrial Icons show at the Danish Museum of Art & Design (2004), which borrowed dozens of instruments from Medical Museion’s collections, opened my eyes to the aesthetic dimension of contemporary medical technology. And Ken had been inspired by exhibitions like Spectacular Bodies (2001) at the Hayward Gallery in London and a show on Walker Evans’s postcard collection (2009), at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

See a list of the dogmas here and a short video presentation here. The full dogma text is behind the Museum Journal‘s paywall. [Added 16 February: now we’ve got Museums Journal‘s permission to reproduce it in full — see here]

Our own Jan Eric Olsén has received 3.2 mill DKK (about 400.000 euro) from the Velux Foundation for a research project on the history of blindness, titled “Vision and touch: a material history of the world of blindness”.

Drawing on archival sources from the Danish Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired, as well as the big ophthalmological and blind-historical collections in Medical Museion, the project will explore the medical and cultural tension between vision and blindness:

The material objects used by the blind and by emphasising the importance of the sense of touch, the project will provide an alternative viewpoint to earlier historical accounts of blindness and its complex relation to vision. By shifting focus from the iconography of blindness to the material objects used by the blind and by emphasising the importance of the sense of touch, the project will provide an alternative view-point to earlier historical accounts of blindness and its complex relation to vision.

Nationalmuseets Charlotte S. H. Jensen skrev igår (på sin Facebook-væg) en positiv kommentar til det nye Art Project (“powered by Google”, som det hedder), hvor man kan ‘gå rundt’ på MOMA, Tate Britain,  Rijksmuseum og andre store kunstmuseer.

I en kort kommentar til Charlottes vægpost skrev jag, at jeg hellere ville besøge fysiske museumsbygninger end et digitalt substitut. Til det svarede Charlotte, at Art Project kan noget, som man ikke kan IRL, nemlig “stikke næsen helt ind i billederne”. 

Nej, man kan faktisk ikke stikke næsen helt ind i billederne i Art Project. Og det er ikke uvæsentligt at diskutere, for det handler om hvad et museum grundlæggende kan og ikke kan i forhold til hvad webben kan.

Det, man gør på Art Project er jo ikke at stikke næsen helt tæt ind i  billedet, men at manipulere digitale repræsentationer af de fysiske billeder.

Det er stadigvæk en ontologisk — og dermed sensuel — forskel mellem på det ene side at fysisk nærme sig billedet som materielt objekt, og på den anden side at forstørre en digital repræsentation af billedet. (Begge er for øvrigt IRL, det er bare to forskellige ‘real lives’ — livet på museet og livet ved skærmen.)

Det er kun på museet man kan kan komme tæt på billedet som fysisk genstand og (i princippet) erfare det med andre sanser end den visuelle. Og det er kun på museet man kan se (og opleve følelsen af at næsten kunne røre ved) billedet. I Google Art kommer man tæt på repræsentationen om man stikker næsen helt op i skærmen. (Den lugter af plastik, skulle jeg hilse og sige.)

Forskellen handler i højeste grad også om kontekstoplevelsen. Der er en kontekstuel forskel mellem at gå rundt i det kølige museumsrum med lydene af andre besøgende rundt omkring sig og at sidde alene ved skærmen på skrivebordet eller ved iPad’en i toget.

Forskellen mellem Art Project powered by Google og et besøg på et kunstmuseum svarer til forskellen mellem porno på skærmen og sex med et fysisk menneske. Det er ikke noget i vejen med skærmsex. Det er bara noget helt andet. I begge tilfælde er det sex IRL. Det er bare ret forskellige ‘real lives’.

Lykønskninger til vores gode kollega Albert Gjedde, som er professor i neurobiologi og farmakologi (og er institutleder for Institut for Neurovidenskab og Farmakologi, SUND) — fordi han lige har fået Orr. E. Reynolds Award for den bedste fysiologihistoriske artikel skrevet af et medlem af The American Physiological Society. Artikeln, der har titeln “Diffusive Insights: On the Disagreement of Christian Bohr and August Krogh at the Centennial of the Seven Little Devils” og lige er blevet publiceret i tidsskriftet Advances in Physiological Education (nr 4, dec. 2010), handler om en interessant videnskabelig konflikt i begyndelsen af sidste århundrede. Prisen vil blive overrakt ved Experimental Biology meeting i Washington, DC, 9-13 april. Her er abstraktet til artikeln:

The year 2010 is the centennial of the publication of the “Seven Little Devils” in the predecessor of Acta Physiologica. In these seven papers, August and Marie Krogh sought to refute Christian Bohr’s theory that oxygen diffusion from the lungs to the circulation is not entirely passive but rather facilitated by a specific cellular activity substitute to secretion. The subjects of the present reevaluation of this controversy are Christian Bohr, Professor and Doctor of Medicine (1855–1911), nominated three times for the Nobel Prize; August Krogh, Doctor of Philosophy (1874–1949), Christian Bohr’s assistant and later Nobel Prize laureate (1920); and Marie Krogh, née Jørgensen, Doctor of Medicine and wife of August Krogh (1874–1943). The controversy concerned is the transport of oxygen from the lungs into the bloodstream: are passive transport and diffusion capacity together sufficient to secure the oxygen supply in all circumstances or is there an additional specific (“energy consuming” or “active”) mechanism responsible for the transport of oxygen from the alveoli into the bloodstream? The present discussion purports to show that the contestants’ views were closer than the parties themselves and posterity recognized. Posterity has judged the dispute unilaterally from the Nobel laureate’s point of view, but it is evident that August Krogh’s Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of a cellular activity (Christian Bohr’s expression), represented by Krogh’s discovery of capillary recruitment. Christian Bohr appears to have been correct in the narrower sense that the diffusion capacity at rest is not great enough to explain the transport during work; a special mechanism intervenes and optimizes the conditions under which diffusion acts. August Krogh, of course, was right in the wider sense that the transport mechanism itself is always entirely passive.

Den er faktisk meget relevant for os her på Medicinsk Museion, ikke mindst fordi Christian Bohr arbejdede og boede her i huset, og vi har mange af August Kroghs ting i samlingerne. Måske kunne Albert have lyst til at lave en lille udstilling om sagen?