After the large-scale renovation of its permanent collection in 2005, the Hunterian Museum in London has expanded its outreach programme under the leadership of senior curator Simon Chaplin.  Today, the museum opens another new temporary show,  “Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots“.

Running until 23 December, the exhibition displays the world of medical robotics. Things like the Probot (1991), a robot designed to aid prostate gland surgery; Freehand, a robotic camera holder for keyhole surgery; mini-robots designed to make their own way around the inside of the human body; the prototype Robotic Camera Pill (2005); and the ARES Robot prototype (2009) which requires patients to swallow up to 15 different modules which then re-assemble inside the body into a larger device that can carry out surgical procedures.

The exhibition will also feature medical robots from sci-fi: from the 1920s ‘Pyschophonic Nurse’ to Japanese Manga and Anime, raising the question  to what extent scientists are inspired by the representation of medical robots in films, books and comics.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that the exhibition has been funded by, among others, The Japan Foundation and The Japan Society.

Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots events including anime and film screenings, discussions and robot family workshops.

Sounds like a great show — I cannot attend the opening — but it looks a must for the annual London trip.

Yesterday, at last, we opened our new exhibition — ‘Primary Substances: treasures from the history of protein research’ — in the main building of the Faculty of Health Sciences here in Copenhagen. 

‘Primary Substances’ is about protein research in the long time perspective, from the early 19th century to the present. However, the main focus is on analytical protein studies between the 1930s and 1980s, i.e., before the emergence of comtemporary proteomics.

The immediate occasion for the show was the newly opened Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research (the exhibition has been paid for by the foundation; no strings attached!). But the scope is much broader, because CPR evidently stands on the shoulders of generations of protein researchers back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when proteins were first isolated and named as such.

It is this long tradition for protein research that the exhibition deals with. As we write in the introduction:

The word ‘protein’ was introduced in 1838 by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius. He derived it from the Greek word ‘proteios’ (πρωτειος), meaning ‘first rank’, ‘primary’ etc., because he thought organic substances like fibrin and albumin were “the primitive or principal substances for animal nutrition”.

Since then, generations of chemists, physicists, physiologists and medical researchers have elucidated the structure of proteins and their function in the cellular machinery of the body in increasingly sophisticated detail.

Scientists from the Nordic countries have played an important role in the development of this truly crossdisciplinary field of research — not least in the invention of new analytical methods.

This exhibition displays a selection of artefacts — separation apparatus, measurement instruments, molecular models, results of experimental work, etc. — that represent this impressive research tradition in different ways.

The keyword here is ’treasures’. ‘Primary Substances’ displays a rare collection of beautiful and historically important artefacts from the treasure chamber of 20th century biomedicine.

For example, the electrophoresis apparatus (borrowed from the Museum of Medical History in Uppsala), built by Arne Tiselius for the separation of serum proteins (alfa, beta, and gamma fractions), which contributed to his Nobel Prize in 1948. Another example is one of the first physical hemoglobin models (borrowed from the Molecular Biology Laboratory in Cambridge, UK), built from balsa wood by Michael G. Rossmann in 1959.

These are just two of the many precious objects in the exhibition representing highlights of the 20th century biomedical heritage. We also display parts of the original Kjeldahl nitrogen determination setup; lab noteboks from the early 1950s with paper strips showing the result of electrophoresis of amino acids; manuscripts by the chemist Kai Linderstrøm-Lang who made the distinction between primary, secondary, tertiary and quartenary structure of proteins; some of the first ampoules for the standardisation of insulin in the early 1920s; a 2D-electrophoresis apparatus plus gels from the late 1970s; two exquisitely beautiful models of the enzyme subtilisin, etc.

I curated ‘Primary Substances’ with the help of Jens Bukrinski, Adam Bencard, Laura Maria Schütze. We have had the pleasure to work together with the skilled Copenhagen museum designer Mikael Thorsted (see his portfolio here) and graphic designer Lars Møller Nielsen, both at Studio8. The extensive conservation work — you cannot really imagine how dirty and damaged some of these objects were when we borrowed them!) — has been done by Medical Museion’s Ion Meyer with the help of Nanna Gerdes and Siri Wahlstrøm.

Below are more pics (all photos: Mikael Thorsted, Studio8):

The core of the exhibition is a 14 meter long glass wall with 16 separate doors leading into a continuous showcase.

To the left is a row of glass panels for text and visuals, and in the small square room to the left there are two free-standing showcases, displaying handmade models of the enzyme subtilisin made in the late 1960s (borrowed from the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen).

A detail from the 14 meter long showcase, displaying three electrophoretic separation apparatuses used by Arne Tiselius in Uppsala and Hugo Theorell in Stockholm in the 1930s. The bulky thing at the bottom is the power supply for Tiselius’ electrophoresis chamber (placed on top right of the power supply)

Three small bottles with pH indicators used by Danish chemist S.P.L. Sørensen at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen in the early 20th century. Sørensen invented the notion of pH for hydrogen ion activity in the course of his studies of enzyme kinetics.

The exhibition is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. You can see it in the Panum building, 3 Blegdamsvej, Copenhagen until the end of 2009.

Her er så programmet for åbningen af udstillingen ”Primary Substances: Treasures from the history of protein research” i Panumbygningen, fredag den 4. september. Det starter i Dam-auditoriet kl. 14.

• Velkomst ved dekan Ulla Wewer, Det Sundhedsvidenskabelige Fakultet
• Oplæg om Novo Nordisk Fonden og ‘Primary Substances: Treasures from the history of protein research’ ved direktør Birgitte Nauntofte, Novo Nordisk Fonden
• Gennemgang af ‘Primary Substances: Treasures from the history of protein research” ved museumschef Thomas Söderqvist, Medicinsk Museion
• Præsentation af og status for The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research ved centerdirektør Michael Sundström
• Afrunding ved dekan Ulla Wewer

Derefter afdækkes udstillingen i Vandrehallen.

Nu på fredag, den 4. september, åbner vi endnu en ny udstilling, nemlig “Primary Substances: Treasures from the history of protein research”.

Det sker ikke her på Medicinsk Museion i Bredgade, men i det nye udstillingsområde i Vandrehallen i Panumbygningen på Blegdamsvej 3 her i København.

Åbningen starter med en times indlæg i Dam-auditoriet kl. 14.00 og så kan man se udstillingen i Vandrehallen fra kl. 15 og fremover.

Udstillingen viser en række ikoniske objekter, som udgør en central del af den biomedicinske kulturarv igennem de seneste to århundreder og dermed bidrager til dannelsen af en biomedicinsk kulturel identitet i dag.

Udstillingen bygger på en række unikke historiske objekter fra museer, arkiver og private samlinger i Danmark, Sverige og England. Sammen danner de et skatkammer, der spejler proteinforskningens udvikling siden Jöns Jakob Berzelius dannede ordet ‘protein’ i 1838.

Udstillingen er sponsoreret af Novo Nordisk Fonden og er blevet til i anledning af åbningen af Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research. Den indvier samtidig fakultetets nye udstillingsområde i Panumbygningen.

Udstillingen er lavet af en gruppe herinde på Medicinsk Museion. Jeg har været hovedkurator og har fået hjælp af Laura Maria Schütze med at holde styr på udvalget af genstande og billeder og af Adam Bencard, som har skrevet tekster om proteinmetaforer. Vi har haft et meget fint samarbejde med Jens Bukrinski, som er proteinforsker på Novo Nordisk A/S.

Arkitekt- og opsætningsarbejdet er lavet af Mikael Thorsted, Studio8, med støtte af Johnny Madsen, og det grafiske arbejde af Lars Møller Nielsen, også Studio8 (alle tre var for øvrigt med på Del+Hel). Ion Meyer, Nanna Gerdes og Siri Wahlstrøm her fra Medicinsk Museion har lavet et stort arbejde med at hente og klargøre de ofte temmelig snavsede genstande fra museumsmagasiner og private samlinger i Danmark og Sverige (en ting er lånt fra Cambridge, UK). Og så har Jonas Paludan og Nikoolaj Møbius hjulpet os med et par elektroniske installationer.

Udstillingen ville ikke være blevet til noget uden et omfattende samarbejde med en række institutioner og privatpersoner, som har lånt genstande ud, hjulpet os med billeder, forklaret obegribelige proteinsammenhænge eller bare været hjælpsomme i største almindelighed.

Her er introduktionsteksten til udstillingen:

The word ‘protein’ was introduced in 1838 by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius. He derived it from the Greek word πρωτειος, meaning ‘first rank’, ‘primary’ etc., because he thought organic substances like fibrin and albumin were “the primitive or principal substances for animal nutrition”.

Since then, generations of chemists, physicists, physiologists and medical researchers have elucidated the structure of proteins and their function in the cellular machinery of the body in increasingly sophisticated detail.

Scientists from the Nordic countries have played an important role in the development of this truly cross-disciplinary field of research – not least in the invention of new analytical methods.

This exhibition displays a selection of artefacts – separation apparatus, measurement instruments, molecular models, results of experimental work, etc – that represent this impressive research tradition in different ways.

We call it an exhibition of treasures, because several of the displayed artefacts have been used in internationally cutting-edge laboratory work; some even for Nobel Prize winning research. They are iconic objects for the formation of a biomedical cultural identity in the same way as Arne Jacobsen’s chairs, lamps and tableware are icons of 20th-century modernism.

The word ‘treasure’ has another meaning as well. Like most other people, scientists collect things – a piece of electrophoretic apparatus, a polyacrylamide gel, a protein model and so forth – which they have used in their daily work in the laboratory. Evocative objects invested with meanings and affects. Things that elicit memories of the life in the lab, its successes and failures. Artefacts that open up memories, like the Madeleine cake did for Marcel Proust in his famous novel À la recherche du temps perdu.

Over time, some of these treasures have ended up in museums. But most of them still remain in the custody of individual scientists and research laboratories.

We have been lucky to be able to draw on both kinds of collections. Many of the objects on display here are simultaneously cultural artefacts and things, which are appreciated on personal and subjective grounds – they balance on the boundary between history and personal memory. They remind us that the historical value and sentimental value of material objects are not easily separated.

My GP once told me I suffer from ‘conscious hypochondria’ — every cough, every bout of fever, is a source of great anxiety. So maybe it would help me to attend the afternoon symposium on ‘Culture and Hypochondria’ at Tate Britain, London, on Friday 18 September 2009.

The speakers — Julia Borossa, Steven Connor, Brian Dillon, Darian Leader, and Caroline Rooney —will explore the history and contemporary meaning of illness and anxiety as mediated by artists, writers and philosophers:

Hypochondria is an ancient name for a malady that is always fretfully new: the fear of disease and the experience of one’s body as alien and unpredictable. Its history is ambiguous: an organic disease with verifiable symptoms, it slowly lost its physical attributes until it came to be seen as a purely psychological disturbance or disreputable character trait. Every historical period has felt itself to be an era of heightened hypochondriacal anxieties; the disorder remains current, but its manifestations shift and alter and overlap from one century, or one decade, to another. The history of hypochondria is an X-ray of the more solid and familiar history of medicine; it reveals the underlying structure of our hopes and fears about our bodies.

More here.

A year ago, Adam and I made fun of the tendency in the humanities and social sciences to invent ‘turns’ — the linguistic turn, the bodily turn, etc. (see earlier posts here and here).

But some ‘turns’ are more justified than others. Melissa Littlefield at the University of Illinois and Jenell Johnson at the Louisiana State University have just sent out a call for papers for an edited collection of essays preliminary titled ‘The Neuroscientific Turn in the Humanities and Social Sciences’:

From economics to English, religious studies to recreation, neurology has become the latest theoretical tool for analyzing society and culture. While there has been some backlash against this trend, research continues to emerge in areas of neurotheology, neuromarketing, neuroethics, neuroaesthetics, the neurohumanities, and neurohistory to name but a few. We are seeking essays for an edited collection that analyze and interrogate this recent neuroscientific turn in the humanities and social sciences. We are particularly interested to hear from researchers who apply the neuro- to their own disciplinary work.

Here are some of the questions the editors raise:

• Why has there been a shift to using neuroscience as an epistemological framework and/or theoretical tool in the humanities and social sciences?
• What kind of arguments does it allow / foreclose / refute?
• How is this trend related to the ‘decade of the brain’?
• How do visualization technologies like fMRI shape or limit the neuroscientific turn?
• Is the neuroscientific turn interdiscplinary, cross-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary?
• What are the rights and responsibilities of such inter/cross/multiple-disciplinary research?
• Should this neuro- research fall under the purview of neuroethics?
• What roles do print and digital media play in the development and distribution of this trend?
• Why and how do the humanities and the social sciences need the neurosciences?
• What can the neurosciences learn from this trend in the humanities and the social sciences?
• How might these fields combine into a discipline of their own?

You are invited to submit a 300 word abstract and a brief (1-3 page) CV to both Melissa Littlefield (mml@illinois.edu) and Jenell Johnson (jjohn@lsu.edu) by 30 October. Final versions of the essays will be tentatively due by 1 June next year.

Yesterday, Vancouver-based writer and curator Robin Laurence wrote a persuasive plaidoyer for post-postmodern art, which I believe has some implications for the understanding of bioart in museums (I’ve been musing about bioart in sci/tech/med museums before).

Laurence identifies a movement of “emerging and established artists who are working with found and salvaged materials, discarded objects and even detritus in what could be seen as a ‘shabby’ or ‘garbage’ aesthetic” which draws attention to “everyday waste and overconsumption”:

British artist John Isaacs employs not scrap lumber or old paint cans, but wax and epoxy resin to create highly realistic sculptures. Often grisly and unsettling, they reflect the profound anxieties of our age. In another approach, artists are embracing a modest scale and old-fashioned media, such as drawing, painting, collage and fiber. Their humble, handmade creations suggest the emergence of a “kitchen table” sensibility. Raymond Pettibon, for example, is acclaimed for his cartoon-like ink drawings on paper, which are filled with social and political observations and quotes from literature and popular culture. Ghada Amer represents a neo-feminist sensibility. Her work, which often consists of embroidered paintings, sculptures and installations, addresses the condition of women, including their sexuality and desire. Her canvases, their images and text embroidered in colored threads, also reveal the kind of gestural, abstract-expressionist painting that postmodernists long ago abandoned. This suggests that the individual “mark” is also part of the new aesthetic.

Rirkrit Tiravanija attempts to change the emphasis in art from the making of objects and their viewing within an institution to socializing and the sharing of experiences. These experiences often revolve around food, which the artist prepares and serves to his audiences – who are also participants in the creation of his art.

In addition to these artists, Robin Laurence focuses her search-light on the legions of street artists,

whose political, social and environmental beliefs are temporarily communicated in alleys, vacant lots and abandoned telephone booths – through graffiti murals, urban ‘interventions,’ posters, stickers … and drawings dropped into the gutter. Again their strategies aren’t new, but they’ve taken on a new urgency in light of today’s economic and environmental crises.

Obviously, bioart is a contested genre. There is a strong tendency to turn bioart into institutionalised high art. This is what, for example, the Wellcome Collection is doing, over and over again (and how could they do otherwise?). We too: in fact, every exhibition we have produced has contained an element of this “postmodern trend toward large, glossy and expensive production”. Our latest exhibition, Split + Splice, is a good example. It may not be as expensive as Olafur Eliasson’s productions. But it’s surely expensive compared to what most medical museums tend to use to spend on artwork!

But — and this is my point — sometimes we have moved into the sphere of urban intervention art, like in the 2006 exhibition ‘Sygdommens Ansigt’ [The Face of Disease] by Huskegruppen. That’s almost it, however. We’ve still got a lot to do in that direction.

Haidy Geismar’s post on ‘significant objects’ gave me an idea for a curatorial game that might increase the awareness of the importance of the material culture and aesthetics of biomedicine and biotechnology:

1. ask a faculty member/graduate student/technician to choose a favourite biomedical object, i.e., an object which is of some significance for them personally, workwise or otherwise.
2. the object may be old or new, small or big, ugly or beautiful, doesn’t matter
3. but it shall be an object, not an idea, image or text
4. ask for at description/story/anecdote connected with the object
5. and a technical description of the object
6. and a photo if possible — or pay a visit and snap one
7. post the story on your blog (preferrably this blog 🙂
8. approach the next faculty member/graduate student/technician

and so forth — then wait for awareness of the material culture and aesthetics of biomedicine to spread like a virus.

Come to Copenhagen and watch UK-based artist Phillip Warnell’s intestines from the inside on Sunday 13 September.

The performance will take place in the old anatomical theatre at Medical Museion at 2 pm. Phillip will swallow a pill camera that is going to send images to a screen — allowing you to follow its way through his intestinal system. London-based consultant gastroenterologist Simon Anderson will be commentator.

Art historian Rune Gade, body historian Adam Bencard and historian of ideas Jan Eric Olsén will set the performance in perspective with references to the status of contemporary performance art, historical understandings of the body and the historical background for today’s endoscopic diagnostics.

The event is organised by Bente Vinge Pedersen and Jonas Paludan here at Medical Museion in cooperation with Golden Days. Tickets (120 DKK) can be bought here.

See also Golden Days website.

The program for the Artefacts meeting at Science Museum, 20-22 September, has been finalised. It looks great! Medical Museion’s former senior curator Søren Bak-Jensen (now at the Copenhagen City Museum) will present some of the ideas behind the current exhibition ‘Split+Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine’. Here is the whole list of papers for the meeting:

• Bruce Lewenstein, Cornell University.
  Can museum visitors learn about the relation of science and technology in museums?
• Peter Donhauser, Vienna Museum of Technology.
  Science versus technology in a museum’s display. Changes in the Vienna Museum.
• Benjamin Gross, Princeton University.
  “The Antithesis of the Attic”: Historical Artifacts, “Interactive” Exhibits, and the Presentation of Science at the Franklin Institute Museum.
• Pnina Abir-Am, Brandeis University.
  “DNA at 50” in Museums of Science and Technology: Regional Culture, Medium, and Message.
• Søren Bak-Jensen,  Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen.
  Relaying the aesthetic and artistic aspects of recent biomedical technologies.
• Alfons Zarzoso, Museu d’Història de la Medicina de Catalunya. Gabarro’s Chess-Board Excision and skin grafting: medical exile in Word War II England.
• Alison Taubman,  National Museums of Scotland.
  From Ships to Chips:  Collecting contemporary Scottish engineering.
• Ben Russell, Science Museum.
  James Watt’s Workshop: from steam pioneer to creative professional.
• Dirk Bühler, Deutsches Museum.
  Portraits of Architectural and Engineering Achievements.
• Klaus Staubermann, National Museums of Scotland.
  Science and Technology as Practice: Dividing Engines in Museums.
• Dirk van Delft, Director, Museum Boerhaave.
  The Quest for Absolute Zero: A Human Story about Rivalry & Cold.
• Jane Wess, Senior Curator of Science, Science Museum.
  Pure Mathematics?: The Cleaning up of Context.
• Jennifer Landry, Chemical Heritage Foundation.
  Beyond the Black Box: A different approach to interpreting the history of chemistry.
• Frank Dittmann, Deutsches Museum.
  Paper on Robotics (title to be confirmed).
• Tom Crouch,  National Air and Space Museum. Capable of Flight? The Interplay of Science and Technology In the Aeronautical Work of Samuel Pierpont Langley.
• Jennifer Levasseur & Margaret A. Weitekamp, National Air and Space Museum.
  Moving Beyond Earth: Exhibiting the Space Shuttle and Future Human Spaceflight.
• Paul Forman, National Museum of American History, Reflection on the workshop