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?
Alain de Botton is an object of dismay to many philosophers because he doesn’t comply with the ritual behaviours of professional philosophy.
But for all of us who don’t consider the publication of peer reviewed articles in academic journals as the fundamental purpose of philosophy, his comments on current human affairs are often refreshing and thought provoking.
A while ago he suggested, in his weekly column in BBC News, that arts and humanities departments should consider offering people guidance how to live, rather than just provide tools for critical thinking. The commentators were divided into those who thought he was in principle onto something and those who thought he was just insane.
Last Friday, de Botton did the trick again, now on the topic of museums. His point of departure for this column is the widely spread suggestion that museums (i.e., art museums; he doesn’t mention other kinds of museums) function as our time’s secular version of temples and churches.
However, in one crucial aspect, museums seem to refuse to play the role of secular temples: they seem to be incapable of linking their exhibitions and objects to “the needs of our souls”:
They don’t do enough with the treasures they have because they present them to us in bland academic ways that fail to engage with the real potential of art, which is — I argue — to change us for the better.
Drawing on Hegel, who defined art as “the sensuous presentation of ideas”, de Botton suggests that “good art is the sensuous presentation of those ideas which matter most to the proper functioning of our souls, and yet which we are most inclined to forget”. Which, in his understanding, helps us answer what a museum should be, viz.:
a machine for putting before us pictures, photographs and statues that try to change us, that propagandise on behalf of ideas like kindness, love, faith and sacrifice. It should be a place to convert you.
At first sight, it looks like de Botton has become a religious convert. But that’s not the case (he claims he’s “a complete atheist”) and that’s not the point of his argument. He’s just “curious”, he says, about the approach churches take towards art — i.e., “not to put pretty things in front of us, but to use pretty things to change us”.
Accordingly, de Botton suggests that the modern secular museum might allow itself to be inspired by a secular version of the Christian approach to art: “What if they too decided that art had a specific purpose — to make us good and wise and kind — and tried to use the art in their collections to prompt us to be so?” What if museums gave up their neutral, distant stance and asked visitors to “look at this image and remember to be patient”, or “use this sculpture to meditate on what you too could do to bring about a fairer world”?
In short, de Botton wants museum curators “dare to reinvent their spaces so that they can be more than dead libraries for the creations of the past” and to “co-opt works of art to the direct task of helping us to live: to achieve self-knowledge, to remember forgiveness and love and to stay sensitive to the pains suffered by our ever troubled species and its urgently imperilled planet”.
I can easily imagine how many of my museum colleagues might think Alain de Botton is really insane (or at least outlandish, retro and generally embarassing). Isn’t a critical museum the true aim of a reflective and theoretically well-informed curatorial profession? (Cf. my earlier post on Piotr Piotrowski and the notion of ‘the critical museum’). Isn’t Alain de Botton just a reactionary crypto-Christian who want to turn museums back into a didactical regime worthy of the old GDR?
Well, maybe de Botton is a crypto-Christian. But even so, he has a point, and I think this point is valid, also for other kinds of museums than art museums.
Now, some kinds of museums do already live up to the call for edification. Many natural history museums, for example, more or less explictly see it as their aim to teach their visitors to take care of nature, help protect fauna and flora, help stop species extinction, and save the planet from climate catastrophies and ecosystem destruction. Such museums have more explicit educational and edifying aims.
So what about history and culture museums? Most such museums are probably more like art museums than natural history museums. They try to avoid being seen as didactic, educational and edifying. True, most such museums want to be critical in one way or the other — of racism, sexism, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, militarism, Western cultural hegemonism, etc. etc — but they rarely present explicit positive alternatives of how we can negate the negative -isms and live better lives.
But is a ‘critical museum’ devoid of any explicit edifying ambitions the only alternative to a traditional nationalistic and high-culture agenda for historical and culture museums? Here Alain de Botton asks the right question, I think. How can we make exhibitions and display our artefacts in a way that change us and our society for the better? Without degenerating into teaching institutions!