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).

It’s easy to become so enthusiastic about the power of web-based media for science communication that one sometimes forgets that science could actually, in some mysterious ways, be communicated even in the age before World Wide Web, blogs and Twitter.

Overly enthusiasm calls for historical reflection — which is exactly what the organisers of the second annual Anglo-French Conference on Scientific Communication and its History, to be held in Paris 9-10March next year, will do when they invite to discussions about the communication of science and technology from the Renaissance to the present:

Technological developments—from the invention of printing with movable type to the postal network, from the railway timetable to the electric telegraph, from the telephone to e-mail—have profoundly influenced the nature of scientific communication and the structure and practice of science.

The conference will be organised around four themes:

• print and text, e.g.: “the transition from manuscript to print-based communities and practices; popular press and the scientific journalist; printing technology, scientific journals and the emergence of disciplines; electronic texts, authorship and new modes of publication; translation and transmission”
• correspondence, e.g.: “the role of the corresponding secretary in early scientific societies; centre and periphery; 18th-century postal networks and the transmission of knowledge; email and accountability”
• networks and gatherings, e.g.: “science and sociability—courts and salons, cabinets of curiosity and coffee houses; organising the first international conferences; the advancement of science movement, leisure and the railway; network formation and the structuring of research”
• non-print media, e.g.: “surveying, observing and telegraphic communication; science in film, film in science; radio and television science journalism; social media and the anti-science movement”

Proposals for 30 minutes presentations in English or French — doctoral students are only allowed to give 15 minute presentations (is that really a good idea?) — shall be sent to Muriel Le Roux (muriel.le.roux@ens.fr) before 15 January 2012.

(read about the first conference here).

What role can science communication units and sci-tech-med museums play in the emerging biosociety?

The forthcoming conference ‘Towards a sustainable bio-based society: aligning scientific and societal agendas for bio-innovation’ in Amsterdam 9-11 May 2012, might provide some food for thought.

Organised by the CSG Centre for Society and the Life Sciences, the three-day meeting will bring together academics, policy experts and industry to identify key trends in ‘”the co-evolution” of contemporary biosocieties and life science research on the other and “develop a roadmap towards a sustainable bio-based economy through the alignment of scientific and societal agendas”. Relevant topics include reflections on the societal aspects of the following issues:

• Sustainable bio-innovation
• Societal impact of synthetic biology and bionanoscience
• Private/public partnerships and IPR
• Biomimesis, biomaterials and biofuels

More info from www.society-lifesciences.nl and from Olga Crapels at crapels@society-lifesciences.nl.

I søndags skrev jeg om de verdensunikke og truede samlinger af embryologiske præparater ved Tornbladsinstitutet i Lund. Det var en appetizer til dagens post …

… som handler om en workshop som Institutionen för Konsthistoria och Visuella Studier ved Lunds Universitet arrangerer den 26. -27. januar 2012 med Tornblad-samlingerne i fokus:

Första dagen kommer att ha mer av ett medicinhistoriskt perspektiv i jämförelse med andra dagen där vi möter materialet med ett konstnärligt angreppssätt samtidigt som vi är öppna för även andra sätt att förstå materialet. Denna öppenhet är nödvändig då materialets beskaffenhet är sådan att det svårt att fälla tvärsäkra omdömen. Det är lätt att helt enkelt tystna inför samlingarna (min kursiv!).

Her er det foreløbige program for workshoppen:

• Bengt Källén, prof. em., forstander for Tornbladinstitutet
• Annika Berg, Framtidsstudier, Uppsala Universitet: “Om Ivar Broman, mellankrigstidens anatomer och hanteringen av döda kroppar”
• Solveig Jülich, Idéhistoria, Stockholms Universitet: “Det offentliga fostret: Några historiska kommentarer”
• Erika Larsson, Konsthistoria, Lunds Universitet: “Animalitet i Rineke Dijkstras New Mothers”
• Johanna Rosenquist, Konsthistoria, Lunds Universitet: “Dark craft i vetenskapens källare”
• Moa Goysdotter, Konsthistoria, Lunds Universitet: “Damien Hirsts Pickled Animals – estetisering av djur i formaldehyd och dess konstmarknad”
• Thomas Söderqvist, Medicinsk Museion, Köpenhamns Universitet: “Förfallets estetik: en utmaning för klassiska vetenskaps-, teknologi- och medicinmuseer”
• Malin E. Nilsson, konstnär och fotograf: Dokumentation av samlingarna utifrån konsten som undersökande praktik.

Workshoppens indhold er ikke helt fastlagt — så der er stadigvæk mulighed for interesserade deltagere at komme med indspark.

Antallet deltagere er begrænset til 30 personer. For mere information, kontakt PhD-studerende Adam Brenthel, Konsthistoria och Visuella Studier, Lunds Universitet (adam.brenthel@kultur.lu.se)

Why write about the life and work of contemporary biomedical and life scientists? What is the use of the genre of biography for understanding contemporary biomedicine? Is it just history by other means, or does biography writing have other uses as well?

In an article titled “The Seven Sisters: Subgenres of Bioi of Contemporary Life Scientsts”(Journal of the History of Biology, vol. 44, pp. 633-650, 2011), I’m approaching these questions by analysing seven kinds of subgenres of scientific biography.

My point of departure for the analysis is the most common use of the genre today, i.e., as a method for writing contextual history of science (this is what I call biography as an ancilla historiae).

In the following sections of the paper, I discuss three other acknowledged contemporary uses of the genre: as a means for understanding the construction of scientific knowledge; as a way of promoting the popular understanding of and engagement with science; and as belles-lettres.

Then I discuss two important, but presently less acknowledged, kinds of biography: as a medium for the public commemoration of an alleged great person (eulogy) and as private commemoration (labor of love).

The paper ends with a discussion of the use of biographies of life scientists as a virtue ethical genre — a genre that implicitly or explicitly contributes to how to live a ‘good life’ in science.

JHB is a Springer-hosted journal so it’s all behind a paywall, but interested friends and colleagues can get a personal pdf-reprint.

Organisatorisk set er der ikke meget tilbage af Tornbladsinstitutet (tidligere også kendt som Embryologiska Institutionen) ved Lunds Universitet. Instituttet blev dannet i 1931 ved en privat donation og den nuværende forstander gik i pension for mere en ti år siden.

Universitetet vil gerne bruge den smukke bygning til andet. Det er bare et problem — den store samling af embryologiske præparater i kælderen. Det drejer sig dels om en stor samling snitpræparater af embryoer fra en række dyr i forskellige udviklingsstadier, dels om en samling hele embryoer fra en lang række dyrearter, dels om et mindre antal humane abnorme foster.

I 2006 bad dekanen for det medicinske fakultet ved Lunds Universitet mig om at vurdere samlingens værdi. Jeg skrev at samlingen, såvidt jeg kunne vurdere, var uden modstykke:

Till Medicinska Fakulteten
Lunds Universitet

Värdering av samlingarna på Tornbladsinstitutet

Tack för uppdraget. Det har varit intressant och lärorikt. Jag har besökt Tornbladsinstitutet vid två tillfällen i oktober och november, sammanlagt ca. 6 timmar, och har därigenom fått god insikt i förhållandena, dels genom självsyn, dels genom samtal med professor Bengt Källén. Vid ett av tillfällena deltog också konservator Ion Meyer, Köpenhamns Universitet, som expert på konservering av humana prepatater.

Jag kan bara uttala mig i min egenskap av medicinhistoriker och museumsman. Jag kan inte uttala mig om samlingarnas evt. nutida medicinska eller naturvetenskapliga värde.

För mer detaljerad beskrivelse av samlingarna, se Jonas Bromans utlåtande. Min värdering härutöver är:

Mht. snittsamlingen: Om den eventuellt inte skulle anses ha vetenskapligt värde, så måste den under alla omständigheter bevaras som ett fantastiskt historiskt dokument över en viktig period i den komparativa embryologins historia. Jag kan inte påminna mig att ha sett en liknande samling i något museum i Europa. Det finns flera forskargrupper i Europa (tex. den embryologihistoriska gruppen vid Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, finansierad av Wellcome Trust) som bedriver forskning om ämnet och som dessutom är intresserade i vetenskapens materiella historia och som därför vore mycket intresserade i att kunna använda sig av samlingen. Samlingen är väl bevarad och kräver endast marginella konserveringsåtgärder. Min rekommendation är att den doneras till en naturhistorisk eller medicinhistorisk institution inom eller utanför Sverige. Det torde inte stöta på etisk patrull.

Mht. normalembryosamlingen: För denna samling gäller också att om den inte skulle anses ha vetenskapligt värde, så måste den bevaras för framtiden som en medicinhistorisk samling. Den enda samling i Europa den kan jämföras med är den komparativa-anatomiska samlingen vid Royal College of Surgeons i London (Hunterian Collection), men denna samling har nästan inget embryologiskt material.

Normalsembryosamlingen är, liksom snittsamlingen, ett enastående historiskt dokument över en viktig period i den internationella komparativa embryologins historia. Tyvärr är den i dåligt skick och kräver restaurering svarande till ca. ett års konserveringsarbete. Min rekommendation är att om ingen vetenskaplig institution kan ta emot den, så bör den doneras till en medicinhistorisk institution inom eller utanför Sverige. I givet fall bör man försäkra sig om att den verkligen blir bevarad, eftersom det alltid finns en risk för att den kan komma att destrueras av förment etiska skäl.

Mht. den patologiska embryosamlingen: Det finns en hel del liknande samlingar i Europa. Men denna lilla samling är i mycket gott skick och det bästa lösningen vore därför att donera den till ett museum som redan har motsvarande samlingar för att komplettera dessa. Därigenom löser man också de evt. etiska invändningar som evt. kan göras mot en donation.

I alla tre fallen finns det institutioner i de nordiska länderna som kan ta emot samlingarna. Kostnaderna för donator/mottagare ska dock inte underskattas. Snittsamlingen fyller en rad tunga plåtskåp som kan vara besvärliga attt flytta. Normalembryosamlingen kräver i storleksordningen 0,5 mill. kr för konservering. Den patologiska samlingen kan däremot doneras utan större omkostningar.

Sammanfattningsvis: Alla tre samlingarna gjorde ett mycket stort intryck på mig. Jag har under mina år som medicinhistoriker och museumsman inte sett något liknande. Snitt- och normalembryosamlingarna har såväl kultur- och medicinhistoriskt som musealt stort internationellt värde. Den patologiska embryosamlingen är mindre unik, men till gengäld lätt att avyttra till en lämplig (också etiskt ansvarig) mottagare.

Låt mig tillägga att en destruktion av någon eller delar av samlingarna vore att betrakta som en form för kulturhistorisk vandalism. Det är ingen tvekan om att det handlar om unika samlingar, såväl kultur- och medicinhistoriskt som musealt, och uppgiften består således i att finna seriösa mottagare (”fosterhem”) åt dem.

Med vänlig hälsning,

Köpenhamn den 5 december 2006

Thomas Söderqvist

Som sagt ved jeg ikke om samlingen har naturvidenskabelig værdi. Men det er ikke nogen som helst tvivl om, at den har meget stor kulturhistorisk værdi.

I de fem år som er gået siden jeg skrev ovenstående rapport er der ikke sket noget. Ingen institution har villet tage ansvar for samlingen. Det er en overhængende risiko for at den vil blive destrueret når universitetet bestemmer sig for at istandsætte bygningen og bruge den til andre formål. Det ville være kulturhistorisk vandalisme.

Men nu har kunsthistorikerne i Lund begyndt at interessere sig for samlingen (se efterfølgende post). Lad os håbe at det planlagte seminar i slutningen af januar vil skabe så meget opmærksomhed omkring samlingen, at den bliver bevaret for fremtiden.