Biomedicine in museums

It’s reasonably easy to imagine how some features of emerging biotechnologies can be turned into museum installations and exhibits. For example, enhancement technologies like nanoprosthetics and tissue engineering can rather easily be imagined as 3D installations.

But other concepts are more difficult to translate from words to space. Like morality, for example. I came to think of this when I read the CfP for the first international conference of the Society for the Ethics and Politics of Emerging Technologies, to be held at Maastricht University, 2-4 July 2012.

The unifying theme for the conference is techno-moral change, especially the influence of emerging technology on morality. For example, the organisers are interested in how our capacity to imagine new moralities may be enhanced by the arts, and they invite artists and art theoreticians to explore how the arts have been addressing techno-moral change in the past, or how they believe art could/should address such issues in the future.

The organisers also say (and this it what made me think about museums) they are interested in contributions on how such moral change chould be taken into account in public debates about emerging technologies.

Medical museums are venues for public debates about emerging medical technologies. But how could we make an exhibit or installation using material culture ressources to address the topic of moral change? Morality seems to me to lack both material and visual qualities.

I’m not thinking of submitting or attending. But if someone else is, send an abstract to epet2012@maastrichtuniversity.nl before 15 February. Read more here.

For to uger siden udsendte Organisationen Danske Museer (ODM) programmet til det årlige formidlingsseminar den 26. – 28. marts.

Seminaret kaldes nu “Internationalt Formidlingsseminar”. Og det undrer mig, for i praksis bryder ODM med et vigtigt princip, som de fleste internationale organisationer bygger på, nemlig at den slags mødeprogrammer først bliver fastlagt efter et åbent “call for papers”.

Dvs. princippet — som en lang række nationale organisationer efterhånden også følger — er at programmerne for åbne møder skal være brugerdrevne og bygge på konkurrence. Efter at have valgt mødetema udsender programkommitteen et “call for papers” for at give alle en mulighed for at byde ind. Og derefter vælger man mellem de indsendte forslag, og vælger selvfølgelig dem, man synes er de bedste og mest innovative. (Et mindre antal “keynotes” kan være udpeget på forhånd, men flertallet indlæg bliver udvalgt udfra hvad der bliver tilbudt.)

Fordelene er åbenlyse: For det første sikrer man sig, at den samlede faglige kompetence indenfor fagområdet bliver hørt og at alle får en mulighed for at byde ind.

For det andet får man en vis modvægt imod den traditionalisme, indespisthed og kammeraderi som tit plager faglige organisationer; med åbne “calls” er der større chance for at nytænkning og anderledes tænkning også kan komme til orde — om den har den fornødne kvalitet.

Og endelig har åbne “calls” den fordel, at man kan blive positivt overrasket over at der findes dygtige og interessante bidragsydere, som man ikke kendte i forvejen. Det gør altså arbejdet nemmere for programkommitteen, som ikke skal vride hjernerne for at huske, hvad der nu måtte findes af interessante bidragsydere; istedet kan man vente på at interessante bidrag kommer af sig selv.

Men sådan tænker ODM desværre altså ikke. I dette henseende tænker ODM og arbejdsgruppen som en klassisk bureaukratisk og alvidende organisation. Godt nok har man et bittelille “call for paper” (i ental; en freudian slip?): “Ønsker du at holde et minioplæg, der handler om medborgerskab i forbindelse med seminaret, skal foredragets titel anføres på tilmeldingen og et kort resumé vedhæftes”.

Men det er som sagt tale om “minioplæg”, hvilket i realiteten betyder, at disse vil blive kørt ud på et sidespor; kun studerende og museumsfrivillige vil blive fristet. Det rigtige program vil blive sammensat af arbejdsgruppen ud fra deres suveræne og begrænsede viden om, hvad der nu eventuelt måtte findes af gode og interessante oplægsholdere og emner i det ganske land.

Jeg synes det er på tide at ODM træder ind i det 21. århundrede og reviderer sin policy for fastlæggelse af programmerne for forårs- og efterårsmøderne. Mit forslag er at:

1) ODM’s bestyrelse fastlægger temaet for næste års konferencer.

2) ODM nedsætter et programudvalg, der får til opgave at udarbejde et “call for papers”.

3) Dette “call for papers” udsendes 3 måneder før deadline og 6-7 måneder inden konferencen.

4) Programudvalget vælger så blandt de bedste af de indsendte forslag med hensyn til kvalitet og et varieret program. Intet forhindrer at programudvalget kontakter personer, som de tror vil kunne komme med gode oplæg, for at bede dem indsende forslag. Og intet forhindrer heller programudvalget at invitere speciale nationale eller internationale foredragsholdere (“keynotes”).

Hvis ikke ODM begynder at leve op til denne almindelige praksis for åbne møder,  synes jeg Kulturarvsstyrelsen burde holde inde med rådighedssummen og tilskuddet fra formidlingspuljen.

Most science, technology and medical museum collections have been brought together from nationally located sources, and are usually described and displayed as national treasures. And most large STM museums still define themselves (and are financed) as truly national museums — Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, the Norwegian Science and Technology Museum in Oslo, and many others.

But that traditional nationalistic approach tends to forget that technology is intimately bound up with globalisation. Not only has cultural and economic globalisation been a major factor behind technology development — technological change has also to a large extent driven globalisation. Some would even say that technology is the major factor behind globalisation: information- and communication technologies are just a contemporary example. Genomic sequencing technologies is another, less well known.

So it’s a great to see that our colleagues Bryan Dewalt (at the Canada Science and Technology Museum) and Nina Möllers (at the Deutsches Museum) are now taking the initiative to edit a volume tentatively titled Objects in Motion: Globalizing Technology for publication in 2013.

The focus of the volume will be on how globalisation has been materialised in technological objects, and they are therefore asking for contributions that “examine machines, appliances and large systems in the (global) networks through which they have circulated”:

Although technological consumer objects such as phones, PCs and frozen foods are frequently named when globalizing effects are described, artefacts often disappear in public and scholarly debates. Yet, by their double nature as both material entity and symbol, they produce, re-produce and react to globalizing effects. While generations of historians of technology have focused on the materiality of objects in the sense that they have analyzed their innovative technical character, their operation modes and ‘improvements’, recent paradigm shifts have resulted in a more integrative approach to technical material culture. Artefacts are increasingly understood as embodying both a material and immaterial side that goes beyond their mere modes of functioning into the social and cultural realm. Concurrent with that is the acknowledgment that technological objects need to be studied in view of increasingly globalized production and consumption cycles. While the globalized world has changed the ways that technological objects have been engineered, built and sold, it similarly has changed how they have been perceived and appropriated as consumer goods and symbols.

One of the proposed themes of the planned book is ‘Globalization and Museums’: As they say: “How has globalization influenced the museum, its collections, its exhibitions, its research and its administration? How do we exhibit globalization?”

The editors would like to see proposals both for research papers (~ 6,000 words), for case studies (max. 3,000 words) and for exhibition reviews/discussions (max. 1,500 words). They have a pretty tight timeline, and want abstracts already by 6 January. Send directly to the editors at bdewalt@technomuses.ca and/or n.moellers@deutsches-museum.de.

Wish I had time to write a piece on the reciprocity of globalisation and genomic sequencing technologies!

Kiel Johnson's Publish or Perish (2009)

Productivity in research is usually measured in terms of number of publications, number of citations, journal impact factors, etc. — and these measures are in turn a major precondition for securing research grants.

But perhaps we’re measuring the wrong things, asks Kent Anderson (the scholarly kitchen). Perhaps we should measure instead how many results have been replicated.

He asks this because there is a raising concern among drug producers that the published scientific literature is unreliable. For example, he quotes Bayer for saying the company has halted almost two-thirds of its early drug target projects because they cannot replicate the results in the published literature. Even many data in the most prestigious journals couldn’t be confirmed.

It’s not necessarily a question of fraud. It can also be the result of exaggeration, wishful thinking and cherry-picking of results. Which in turn is sustained by the ubiquitous publish-or-perish attitude in scientific institutions. The combination of careerism and neo-liberal managerial thinking in universities is a dangerous cocktail.

Næste tirsdag, den 20. december, vil vores egen Adam Bencard holde et oplæg i INDsigt-seminarrækken ved Institut for Naturfagenes Didaktik, KU, på temaet ‘Æstetik, læring og menneskesyn’:

Tilsyneladende er der ikke meget sammenhæng mellem æstetik og undervisning. Æstetik handler om kunst og hvorvidt ting er pæne, og undervisning handler om optagelse af fakta og rationel viden. Eller gør det? I dette oplæg vil jeg diskutere en alternativ opfattelse af æstetik og æstetikkens betydning i indlæringskontekst specifikt og i menneskesyn mere generelt. For går man tilbage i æstetikkens historie, mere specifikt til den tyske oplysningstænker og æstetikkens fader Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762), så ligger der et helt andet sigte og et urealiseret program for æstetikken. Baumgarten udviklede ikke æstetikken som et studie af kunst eller skønhed, men mere generelt som en alternativ vidensforståelse, der strækker sig videre end rationalistiske og empiriske tilgange. Han forsøgte at inkludere sansernes erfaring og det levede liv som et af de vigtigste redskaber til at forbedre menneskelig viden og indsigt. Æstetik, ligesom undervisning, er bygget på nogle bestemte forståelser af hvad et menneske er og hvad god viden er, og det er nogle af de emner, som dette oplæg vil diskutere.

Tid og sted: Tirsdag d. 20. december, kl. 14:15 – 16:00. Institut for Naturfagenes Didaktik, Observatoriebygningen, Øster Voldgade 3, 2100 Kbh K. Indgangen til højre (seminaret holdes i undervisningslokalet). Deltagelse i seminaret er gratis, men send tilmelding til indsigt@ind.ku.dk,  senest den 19. december.

I came to think about the role of narrativity in museum exhibitions when I saw the programme for the The Swedish National Exhibition Agency’s annual meeting in Visby last week.

The aim of the Agency (Riksutställningar in Swedish) is to promote exhibition development. And since Sweden has a pretty strong, and internationally oriented, tradition for exhibition making, these meetings are a kind of a gauge of the state of art of exhibition making.

What has prompted me to write this post is how the notion of narrativity permeated the annual meting.

The focus on narrativity is overwhelming. The meeting actually started with a “Storytelling workshop” with the argument that “storytelling can act as a key to bringing an exhibition – or even an entire museum – to life”, and that “many visitors testify that what they remember from a seminar or a visit to a museum was the narrative”.

The storytelling workshop was followed by another workshop titled “A world of stories” led by the Agency officer in charge of exhibition methodology development. Quoting American poet Muriel Rukeyser (“The world is not made of atoms – it is made of stories”), he discussed personal development theories about the narrative self and ended the session (according to the abstract) by creating a world picture “in which the story is reality and reality is filled with stories”.

Both these introductory workshops thus put narrativity at the center stage of the Swedish annual exhibition meeting. And the following three days continued in the same vein.

For example, the director of one of the leading regional museums talked about “how storytelling can permeate and provide a profile for the entire museum operation”. The announcement for the session “A weave of stories” claimed that “everyone has a story” and that “sharing one’s story with others is an essential aspect of our cultural heritage and is part of being human”.

And in yet another session (titled “Starry-eyed: storytelling in museum and exhibition operations”) narrativity was set in opposition to knowledge communication; to “include knowledge in a narrative”, was seen as an alternative path to presenting facts (that’s really a strawman’s argument!). And, of course, the city of Visby experienced its first Storytelling café.

All this focusing on narrativity and story-telling at the Visby meeting is by no means a specific Swedish phenomenon. In the last decade or so, narrativity has become a fashionable approach to exhibition making all over the Western world. New Zealand’s Te Papa museum, for example, has formulated an explicit “narrative approach” to exhibitions and visitor programmes. A few minutes browsing on the net will easily convince you that international museum exhibition conferences abound with references to narrative theory.

In my view, however, the current enthusiasm for narrativity and story-telling in exhibitions is quite problematic.

First, because narrative is only one of several rhetorical modes. The classical modes also include exposition, argumentation and description (and perhaps others which specialists in literary theory are more knowledgeable about than I am). And these other modes play a very important role in exhibitions.

For example, exhibitions are to a large extent expository. That is, they present concepts, images and things, they explain and inform, they invite to discussion about how the world is. And even if the text isn’t the most important part in a exhibition – because material things and images are more important – an exhibition usually nevertheless is more like a textbook or encyclopedia article (the archetypical examples of expository writing) in three-dimensional space filled with material things, than a sequential story (narrative).

Exhibitions are also to a large extent descriptive. As the Wikipedia article on modes of writing says, “the purpose of description is to re-create, invent, or visually present a person, place, event, or action so that the reader can picture that which is being described.” Seems to me like a standard ingredient in exhibition making.

Argumentation is also a very common mode of exhibition making. That is, many exhibitions are made to discuss a topical issue, present arguments in favour of an idea, and convince the visitors about something – or maybe just provoke visitors to think deeper about something, to urge them into action. In other words, when a museum makes an exhibition about climate change (like here), it is not in the business of story-telling; it is thinking in terms of an argumentative mode of exhibition making.

In other words, my point is that narration is not the only mode of exhibition making there is – it’s probably not even the most important one. For example, here at Medical Museion, like in most other sci-tech-med museums, the galleries and installations are not particularly narrative. They reflect (like in most other kinds of museums) much more expository and descriptive (and to some extent argumentative) modes of expression.

I’ll continue in a later post with another reson why I think a too one-sided focus on narrativity in exhibition making is problematic. Stay tuned!

PS: The featured image is from http://www.exedes.com/storiesatwork.php.

Follow Medical Museion’s advent medicalendar here:
http://adventcalendr.com/julemedikalender. It’s followed up daily on our Facebook wall. This year in Danish only, unfortunately … but next year we’ll probably make an English version.

Stefanie S. Jandl and Mark S. Gold are planning an edited volume tentatively titled Academic Museums, to be published by MuseumsEtc. next summer. The volume shall examine successful strategies, tactics and activities within the academic museum community internationally, and the editors are particularly interested in innovative practical experiences that can be applied within the wider museum community

Their call for contributions to the volume is exciting because it sums up what I think are some of the major strengths of a university-owned museum like ours:

College and university museums originated out of the desire to teach with, and learn from, original objects. These museums today aim to be active participants in the teaching life of their campus communities and vital sites for learning, interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration, and professional training in many disciplines. Academic museums differ from their freestanding counterparts in that they can express their mandates in broader and more innovative ways. They can, for example, install exhibitions that explore controversial topics or artists under the “umbrella” of education. They can create small, focused shows with little pressure to produce blockbuster exhibitions. They can include campus voices in exhibitions, and foster critical dialogues within and beyond the classroom. And they can explore the teaching possibilities of a broad range of objects and exhibit those objects in new or unorthodox ways.

Well, I can hardly find a better argument for the role of university museums in the contemporary museum world.

Here’s a lost of potential topics for contributions:

• developing exhibitions that explore controversial topics or artists
• cultivating critical dialogues within and beyond the classroom
• engaging a diverse community and including campus voices in museum programming
• how a college/university museum is uniquely positioned for innovation, risk-taking, and challenging audiences
• the museum’s role as a site for interdisciplinary teaching and learning
• how the mission of the museum relates to, or conflicts with, the mission of the parent institution
• how trustees resolve the tension between preserving the museum’s collection and sustaining the broader educational mission
• the value and opportunities in object-based learning
• cultivating relationships with faculty across disciplines and helping them integrate a museum’s resources into their teaching
• building a collection appropriate to the educational institution and its audiences
• organizing exhibitions with faculty members and students
• how a college/university museum defines its role in the community
• the unique opportunities that academic museums offer for experiential learning and mentoring students
• fundraising and donor relations within a larger non-profit entity
• promoting the value of a museum to administrators and trustees
• how to successfully compete for funds
• securing outside grants as a museum with a parent organization
• case studies of recent or current innovative and pioneering programs

Wow, that’s a list! However, the schedule is way too tight in my opinion. They want a <250 words abstract and a short bio before the end of the year, and then they think they can get the book out before next summer. I do indeed like rapid publishing, but it’s really impossible to produce a thoughtful contribution with such short notice and a delivery dead-line of 25 February. (Where’s the time for thinking? For peer-review? Will it be peer-reviewed?)

With these caveats, however, this is such a great topic, so if you feel tempted — and don’t care about spending time to write an apparently non-peer-reviewed paper (who said university museums?) — don’t hesitate to send an abstract to Stefanie and Mark (at AMEditors@gmail.com) and the publishers (at books@museumsetc.com) within the next two weeks.

Det var da et helt fantastisk valg af billede til gårsdagens pressemeddelelse om oprettelsen af Kulturstyrelsen!

På en subtil måde illustrerer det problemet med den statslige styring af kulturen. Solen er på vej ned, frosten lægger sig over kulturlandskabet. Er der en ny istid på vej?

Teksten til pressemeddelelsen lyder:

Kulturstyrelsen er navnet på den nye styrelse under Kulturministeriet, som oprettes pr. 1. januar 2012. Kulturstyrelsen dannes ved en fusion af Kulturarvsstyrelsen, Kunststyrelsen og Styrelsen for Bibliotek og Medier. Samtidig oprettes Styrelsen for Slotte og Kulturejendomme.

Mere her.

I just received a call for papers to a planned special issue of the journal Science & Education on history of science in museums.

That’s a great topic, in principle. But when I began reading the announcement, I had a weird feeling of the kind you can sometimes have when  encountering otherwise familiar phenomena in a foreign setting:

Science museums and science centres are primary avenues to communicate science to the public and are the major non-formal settings for science education. Yet, the potential role of the history (and philosophy) of science in this cultural context is not well explored.

I guess what bewildered me is that history of science has been the obvious vantage point for most science museums for more than a hundred years. In other words, science museums have by definition been museums that displayed science historically: science museums have been identical with science history museums.

But then I realised that this call had been made by scholars who don’t at all take this for granted. On the contrary, from the point of view of science centers and science education, history of science is just one of several possible tools for educating young people about science. Science centers don’t necessarily care about the history of science at all.

This becomes more clear further down in the call, where history of science is mentioned as “an exhibited narrative … introducing science to the lay audience in museums and centres” and as “a methodological tool for science teaching; that is as a topic featuring in the content of museum educational programmes”.

My weird feeling has to do with the fact that I’ve never entertained the idea that, from a science center and science education point of view, history of science could been seen as a new and exciting methodological tool to inform science museums — as if history of science museums didn’t exist and never had. It’s like coming to a country where cricket looms large and hearing an indigenous person say they’ve just discovered football as a great way of using the green turf for ball games.

Anyway, the last submission date for manuscripts is 31 March 2012, send to www.editorialmanager.com/sced. More information from the editors of the special issue: Anastasia Filippoupoliti (afilipp@yahoo.gr) and Dimitris Koliopoulos (dkoliop@upatras.gr).