Biomedicine in museums

Some time ago, the National Library of Medicine opened a new exhibition called ‘Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health’ in the library foyer on NIH campus, Bethesda. Featured stories include the early years of the AIDS epidemic in the US, the Chinese barefoot doctor movement, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, and the WHO smallpox eradication program.

I haven’t seen the physical exhibition, only the web version. Admittedly, public health is probably one of the most difficult topics for exhibitions (physical or web-based). But given NLM’s huge economic ressources, one could expect something much better. For example, take a look at the online games on the Online Activities & Resources page. If you haven’t seen a late-1990s interactive website before, here’s your chance; it’s against the odds.

A laudable aim — to illustrate “the importance of clean water, safe housing, nutritious food, affordable healthcare, and protection from violence in fostering health and wellbeing” — is lost in a pretty boring web product.

I wonder if this video will attract that many postgrads to “research training, career development and mobility schemes allowing researchers to be truly mobile both internationally and between commercial and non-commercial sectors”? (the European Union Marie Curie Actions programme).

That said, the retro style is obviously inspired by the classic ‘Protein Synthesis: An Epic on the Cellular Level’ (1971) (cf. the upper video with the one below).  

[biomed]HDw4gk5pYl8[/biomed] [biomed]u9dhO0iCLww[/biomed]

(thanks to Jessica for the EU video tip) 

Just a few years ago, this museum with its old buildings, rich collections, and esoteric research projects was one of the best preserved secrets in the Danish museum world. Few members of the public knew about our existence.

But now we are gradually opening up the place, with new temporary exhibitions, expanded regular opening hours, etc. Part of the visibility strategy has been to put up a banner on the front facade. Which hasn’t been easy, because you are not allowed to put anything on our classified buildings (or on the interior walls, for that sake) without the permission of The Heritage Agency of Denmark. So we’ve spent years (literally) on correspondence forth and back to satisfy the agency’s strict aesthetic requirements.

Please don’t ask how many hours we’ve spent negotiating the colour, size and font of this piece of plastic (some things in museum life do not always come easily, and heritage agencies aren’t among the most creative government bodies when it comes to design restrictions).

But, at last, here it is — Medical Museion’s first banner (the ‘drops’ at the bottom is the logo of the Faculty of Health Sciences).

(see also Bente’s post on Museionblog here)

Today’s poetic quote on science blogging from Deepak Singh:

I think all of us have bemoaned the lack of depth in mainstream scientific coverage, in the shallowness of press releases. One of the roles we [i.e., science bloggers] can play/should play is bringing reality to the science many of us love and breathe. To highlight the beauty and power of what we do and its fragility. To explain the potential of scientific discoveries, yet keep them real and not make them sound like a silver bullet to solve all ills

That’s why I think (again and again) that In the Pipeline is such an excellent science blog, because it brings the reality — both the beauty and the fragility — of the lab into life. The power of plain talk.

The Art|Sci Center at University of California, Los Angeles, organizes a ‘Body Art Disease’-symposium on 6 November, featuring presentations, exhibitions, installations, roundtables, social gatherings, curated talk, and tours in the vaults of UCLA’s Special Collections. Participants include a number of interesting and creative people: Philip Beesley (University of Waterloo), Jill Scott (The Neurobiological Lab at the Institute of Zoology, University of Zürich), Phillip Warnell (Warwick University, UK), Susan Kozel (SMARTlab Digital Media Institute at the University of East London), Barbara Drucker (Art, UCLA), AJ Willcocks (Australia), Virocode (Peter D’Auria and Andrea Mancuso) and Caitlin Berrigan (MIT). More info here.

MR-neuroimaging and other methods for studying brain function have been used for some time now to provide criminal defence evidence in courtrooms, at least in the US. But how does neurowiring relate to classical judicial concepts like ‘intent’ and ‘responsiblity’? Can neuroscience offer excuses for criminal activity? The Triple Helix Cambridge (www.camtriplehelix.com) organizes a debate about recent adances in neuroscience and the law, next Tuesday, 21 October. Raymond Tallis, Nikolas Rose (BIOS Centre, LSE) and Ian Treasaden (Forensic Neuroscience, Imperial College) will give short presentations followed by questions from and discussions with the floor. More on Facebook here. 

On 11-12 December, the Postgraduate Forum on Genetics and Society — set up ten years ago to “bring together researchers interested in how biosciences and society(s) intersect” — organizes a colloquium at Lancaster University on the theme ‘Social and biosciences – a critical collaboration’. Keynote speech from Steve Sturdy (Genomics Forum Deputy Director), panel session with Richard Tutton (Lancaster), Niall Scott (Uclan) and Adam Hedgecoe (Sussex), and presentations by Paul Oldham and Dita Wickins-Drazilova (both Lancaster). They’re expecting student presentations too (deadline for abstracts is 7 November). Read more about the Forum and the December meeting here: http://www.pfgs.org/.

As usual, and as announced earlier, Medical Museion took part in the Copenhagen Night of Culture (Kulturnatten) — a mid-October Friday each year when hundreds of museums, galleries and other institutions in the inner city area are open all evening.

We didn’t have as many visitors as we use to have — ‘only’ slightly above 2000 passed through the doors during the six opening hours. We were not alone, however. This year’s Night of Culture was as a whole not as well-attended as in earlier years, for whatever reason. (Actually 2000+ visitors is much better both for us and our guests; it gives an opportunity to speak with at least a few individuals, and queuing isn’t a killer as it has sometimes been).

Here’s our administrator, Carsten, distributing visitor’s programmes.

 

We had invited two choirs to perform in the old anatomical theatre — here’s Vokalgruppen Kolorit led by Niels Græsholm:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Together with one of our student guides (Sune), our conservators, Ion and Nicole, had express-built an ingeniously simple, yet very functional, storage case for some of our precious anatomical artefacts (wet specimens on the top):

  

 

 

 

 

 

As usual, our staff was spread out all over the house. Here Søren explains 18th century surgical practices

and here Martha measures her hands against those of Seneca in the ‘Oldetopia’ temporary exhibition. 

 

 

 

Like last year, the Director of Danmarks Lungeforening, Charlotte Fuglsang and her staff did their best to test as many visitors as possible for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (often a result of the filthy habit of smoking):

 

 

 

 

 

 

while the Glühwein crew (Thomas, Bjørn and Niels Christian) did their best to sabotage Danish public health by seducing bypassers to the dangerous habit of alcohol consumption,

and Emil and Sven Erik resorted to the even more dangerous habit of consuming large amounts of crisps during a short break in the staff kitchen.

Here our technician, Folke, guides people in the right direction:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of our student guides, Ditte, explains the history of epidemic diseases to visitors:

while Jonas tells dramatic stories about 19th century miasmas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, in the hands of the Glühwein crew: Monica, our administrative assistant, who did a marvellous job planning the whole operation:

(the white hospital coats and lila T-shirts with the Medical Museion logo was yet another of Monica’s innovative ideas for this year’s Night of Culture in Copenhagen)

Quite a few medical conditions can be seen on the visible parts of the body. Artists have sometimes used such disease signs to catch an individual’s medical identity — Henry Moore’s 1970s portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin‘s arthritic hands is a well-known example (see Patricia Fara’s article in Endeavour 2003, pp. 85-86).

If the condition isn’t visible, however, few people deliberately display their disease, its symptoms or its underlying biomedical causes in the public sphere. Few patients wear clothes, accessories or badges to identify themselves as, for example, leukemia or colon cancer patients — in contrast to how they would use a badge to announce their political sympathies.

That’s why I was intrigued to see a recent example of how tattooing can be used to express medical self-identity. In an interview in the LA Times Health Section (8 Sept), Joshua Sandoval (MySpace profile here) says he tried to keep his Type 1 diabetes a secret for many years:

I realized I still hadn’t accepted the fact I was a diabetic. Sure, I’d dealt with the physical aspects — monitoring my blood glucose levels and giving myself multiple daily insulin shots, eating healthfully, exercising regularly — but I was still keeping the illness private. I still felt abnormal.

But at the age of 22, and to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the diagnosis, Joshua decided “to announce to the world who I am” by having a disease-specific tattoo.

Being “both a writer and a diabetic”, he settled for a quill sticking out of a syringe, a tattoo which would, says the LA Times reporter, “speak to his place in the world”. (Above is Joshua during taping for LA Ink, a reality show that follows the events at the High Voltage Tattoo studio, where also many Hollywood celebrities have their tattoos made.)

Joshua has generously sent us this pic that shows the details of the tattoo:

(credit: Joshua Sandoval)

This very nicely crafted tattoo makes me think of two things. First, it is different from those with a biomedical motif, which we have written about before on this blog. In the case of ‘Therese’, for example, the DNA tattoo is used to announce her professional identity as a biology teacher. In Joshua’s case it goes further — he inscribes both his professional identity (the quill) and his defining biomedical identity (the diabetes syringe) in a joint symbol. 

Second, some people may compare this kind of biomedical identity inscription with, for example, the brutal Nazi practice of tattooing Jewish camp prisoners to make their alleged biological/racial identity visible. I don’t think it makes much sense to make such comparisons, however. One is voluntarily and made as a token of self-empowerment; the other was enforced as part of a strategy of de-humanisation and disempowerment.

Has anybody seen similar expressions of biomedical identity image making? 

Our own Camilla Mordhorst has been interviewed in the last issue of Riksutställningar’s newsletter (in Swedish). Most exhibitions in cultural history are amazingly traditional, she claims. The Wellcome Collection in London is one of the few which have developed new, exciting narrative techniques, and so has the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg. But otherwise most museums seem to be afraid of experimenting too much. Camilla suggests that museums shall “give visitors a brainstorm instead of a linear time-flow”, a kind of ”additive narration” she calls it. She also points to the problem with invisible curators; facts and artefacts are often presented in a way so that visitors cannot see how they were chosen: “When you cut out the sender you inhibit the language of the exhibition”. Finally, as a curator you don’t have to be subjective, but neither should you pretend to be neutral: “Like a good article, an exhibition has to be argumentative and seductive: it shall be carried forward by statements, either simple or complex”.