The Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, Hungary, has a new exhibition, “Resonance — Electromagnetic Bodies” curated by Nina Czegledy and Louise Provencher between 22 June and 27 August:

“The exhibition explores the notions of being and desire in a society determined by our bodily immersion within an ubiquitous and omnipresent electromagnetic realm”.

The exhibition website didn’t work today, but try again later …

If you are interested in what goes on in the university museum world you may want to take a look at the University Museums and Collections (UMAC) website, edited by Cornelia Weber. It has, among other things, a very useful and up-to-date database of museums and collections around the world (including medical history museums) and they also publish a newsletter, edited by Lyndel King — the last issue (June 2006) is available to members of the UMAC only, but earlier issues can be read here.

A series of lectures on historical and social science perspectives on genomics (“Genomics in Perspective”) were held at the NIH in May and June (lecture website here). For full videos, look here. For short abstracts to browse before watching, look here.
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The former DK-UK Postgraduate Network on Bio-studies has merged with something called PLSSG (Postgraduate Life Sciences and Society Group). This way, they say, “we can initiate local subgroups and arrangements as well as explore comparative and transnational trends”. So far the network is mainly limited to members in Denmark and the UK, but hopefully others will join. For further info, see the PLSSG website hosted by the London School of Economics.
(thanks to Annette V. Jensen, a.v.jensen@lse.ac.uk)

The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London has taken an interesting and unusual initiative when creating a job for an ‘outreach historian’ (see the announcement here and below). The only problem is that the position (as judged by the announcement) does not seem to involve any requirement to do research in science communication studies, or museological studies, or any other research area of relevance for the communicative practice. If this is the case, the position risks becoming a second rate academic job. But otherwise it is an excellent initiative. Now at least five London institutions with a strong academic basis are competing in the increasingly important medical history public outreach arena.
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Johannes Grave, postdoc at NFS Bildkritik / NCCR Iconic Criticism, Universität Basel (and who visited us with the Wandering Seminar in mid-May; he is sitting a step below Susanne on this pic) has sent us the following comment and photos of three objects which caught his attention when he inspected our collections and those in Cambridge and Munich:
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As you may have noticed, the blog has been idle for almost two weeks. We have been traumatised by the recent flood of spam. In fact almost 200 spam comments a day have come from these beasts who want to sell their online poker games, viagra pills, ‘cheap’ mortgages, etc., which they believe we are all in dire need of. Now we are in the process of upgrading to the newest 2.0.3 version of WordPress, which will not only give us much better blogging facilities but hopefully also a much better protection against the Global Spam Scum.

The NSU Press is planning to publish an anthology about “Things” — not about “things” in general, but about “the pursuit of filtering away human experience from the thing — possibly to give it back to the world, or to let it speak for itself”, or, in other words, “all attempts at omitting human experience for the sake of things” (see below). Here is their call for abstracts:
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The current issue of leading U.S. weekly newspaper The Onion carries a groundbreaking feature article on the upcoming season for transplant organ harvest
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Finn Kamper Jørgensen, direktør for Statens Institut for Folkesundhed, har taget initiativ til en temadag den 7. juni om “Sundhedspolitiske erindringer fra min ministertid”, hvor otte danske sundhedsministre og en departmentschef fortæller erindringer fra deres embedstid. 40 minutter hver. Det er en interessant seminarform, på grænsefladen mellem mundtlig politikerselvbiografi og “vidneseminar” (witness seminar), som vil kunne give interessante meldinger, om ikke andet en række vidnesbyrd om, hvad en minister kan tillade sig at sige i dag, mange år senere, om hvad det skete den gang, de befandt sig i begivenhedernes centrum. Og sundhedsministre har, som bekendt, tit været ude i stormvejr. Her er programmet for temadagen:
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