As I wrote in an earlier post, we are now on the track of building up the new semi-permanent exhibition ‘Under the Skin’ in the museum’s Tietkens Gaard building.

In the last couple of months, our conservator Nanna Gerdes has worked hard to take down the three former exhibition rooms and packed the artefacts for remote storage.

Judged by Nanna’s enthusiastic photographing activities, taking down the old exhibitions for storage seems to be almost as fun as building up new ones.

See Nanna’s storified twitter posts of the X-ray study collection with images here; ditto from the Finsen exhibition here, and ditto from the exhibition of anatomical models here.

[flickrset id=”72157633259585518″ thumbnail=”thumbnail” photos=”” overlay=”true” size=”medium”].

(And here’s the ground plan of the rooms exhibition, ca.  25 x 12 meters in all:)

 

 

We are now in the first phase of the construction of our new 3500 square feet semi-permanent exhibition here at Medical Museion — provisionally titled ‘Under the Skin’ — to be opened in the late autumn of 2014.

The exhibition will show some of best specimens from our big collection of normal and pathological anatomical specimens and other human remains, together with a number of new acquisitions from contemporary human remains, such as samples from bio- and tissue banks.

[flickrset id=”72157633220266252″ thumbnail=”thumbnail” photos=”24″ overlay=”true” size=”medium”]

Already last year we secured the basic funding for the new exhibition from the Arbejdsmarkedets Feriefond (AFF), but until recently we’ve been waiting for the University of Copenhagen’s decision to redecorate the beautiful exhibition rooms in the mid-18th century Tietkens Gaard building.

Now the University has decided to start the redecoration and therefore we are now launching an exhibition site, where we tell about the successive phases of the construction process:

1) taking down the former study collections in the spring of 2013

2) clearing the rooms

3) the rebuilding and redecoration of the rooms in the next 6 months

4) the continuous development of the concept for the new exhibition and the preliminary design ideas

5) choosing and curating objects and images in the next 12 months; and finally

6) the mounting and installation in the early fall of 2014.

Our conservator Nanna Gerdes has tweeted her daily work taking down, packing and conserving the objects from the former study collections in the room (follow her here: @NaGerdes).

New thoughts and ideas for the exhibition project will be available through our blog and via Facebook.

Read more here: https://www.museion.ku.dk/under-huden-under-konstruktion/

Want to explore fat with pencil and pastry fork?

We seem to live in a world obsessed with fat. Obesity is described as a worldwide health threat, and we are bombarded by diet advice. But fat itself is a mystery. While we know that “full fat” foods can be bad for us, we also know that the body needs fat (and of course, greasy food can be the most delicious). We often find fatty substances disgusting, but moisturize our skin with lotions based on lard and oil. And the kinds of bodies seen as beautiful oscillate wildly over time and media. It’s a love-hate relationship.

Last year we opened the exhibition “Obesity – what’s the problem?” here at Medical Museion. The exhibition takes a close look at the gastric bypass operation used to treat morbid obesity, and some intriguing recent research in metabolism. It’s all very scientific and clinical. But what about fat as a substance? How do we feel about it?

On Sunday 5 May we organise an afternoon event full of sensuous exploration of our love/hate relationship with fat. With London-based fine artist Lucy Lyons as our guide, we will feel, draw and eat our way through a world of fat. Also participating will be senior curator Bente Vinge Pedersen, Medical Museion, who is responsible for the exhibition ”Obesity – What’s the problem?”. Associate Professor Romain Barres, a specialist in human fat tissue and metabolism at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR), University of Copenhagen, will help us explore what scientists know about the way that fat cells work.

The event takes place at Medical Museion, Bredgade 62, 1260 Copenhagen K on Sunday 5 May, 1-5 pm.

Tickets including entrance to the museum, coffee/tea and cake are on sale at Billetto, 75 DKK.

More info here: https://www.museion.ku.dk/the-substance-of-fat-a-multisensory-event.

Ken Arnold (Wellcome Collection) and I had a joint sesssion titled “Integrating research, acquisitioning, curation, exhibition making and events in museums” at the Danish national museum meeting in Horsens, two weeks ago. Based on this predistributed session abstract:

Drawing on our experiences from the Medical Museion and the Wellcome Collection, respectively, we suggest that a successful and productive in­tegration of these functions of the museum does not involve creating or­ganisational structures, but rather the cultivation of curiosity and a ‘will to inquire’. A research spirit can stimulate exhibitions, events and curator­ship, and vice versa the handling of material objects can give rise to new and interesting research problems.

we gave two short introductory talks followed by a long general discussion. Here’s my (untitled) intro talk.

Ken Arnold and I are running two venues which are in some ways very similar and yet quite different.

Similar in the sense that we address some of the basic questions concerning human existence – questions about life and death, well-being and disease. We’re dealers in the sublime – because we investigate the future prospects of the human body which are simultaneously very frightening and deeply fascinating.

But different in the sense that the Wellcome Collection is extremely well-endowed and situated in one of the busiest roads in a globalised Metropolis with hundreds of thousands of visitors per year, whereas the Medical Museion is placed in a sleepy part of Wonderful Copenhagen with a much smaller budget and one-tenth of their visitor numbers.

However, our venues are also both similar and different with respect to the theme of this conference – in the way we handle the interaction between the activities we mention in the title of this session: research, acquisitioning, curation, exhibition making and events. In this respect, the similarity between is that we see this integration not as a organisational question, but a question of spirit.

The fundamental spirit here is what we call a research attitude. As we say in the abstract, we both think in terms of what we call “the cultivation of curiosity and a ‘will to inquire’”.

This is an attitude that goes both ways. It means making exhibitions, launch events, handle the collections, and bring in new acquisitions in the spirit of curiosity. It means trying to make all such activities inquiry-driven. On the other hand, it also means that the handling of material objects, images and archives, and the making of exhibitions, is a daily generator of interesting research questions.

The slight difference between our venues in this respect is in the way we have moved towards this position. Wellcome Collection started as an exhibition and event venue, and then Ken, very much through his own initiative and his own research background in the history of science and history of museums, brought an attitude of research, curiousity, and playfulness into these public engagement activities.

Medical Museion, on the other hand, grew out of an academic research project, which then gradually broadened to include more and more of the traditional museum activities. I came to Copenhagen a decade ago — to what was then called a medical history museum and basically was a huge collection of medical historical artefacts — as a professor in the history of medicine and with a traditional university mindset, meaning that research and teaching (from undergraduate to PhD level) is the basic rationale for everything one does.

At that time I was still thinking of research exclusively in terms of the publication of scholarly books on serious university presses and research articles in peer-reviewed journals (as most of my university colleagues still do). From the university’s and my own point of view at that time, public engagement, including exhibitions and events, were pretty subordinate activities. Not to speak about collections; they weren’t even mentioned in the university’s strategy documents and in my view they were largely a burden and a nuisance.

But during the last ten years, I have gradually widened and broadened my notion of research. I began to think about collecting (acquisitions) and exhibition making, and even public events, not just as outreach, or at best as raw experiences for writing research publications, but as a form of creative research activity in their own right. And from then on I began to think about everything we do in the museum from the point of view of the researcher and in terms of an experimental mindset.

To be experimental here means that we try, as far as possible, to think about all activities at Medical Museion — exhibition making, event making, acquisitions, collection management, organising seminars, etc. – as ongoing experiments. We continuously try to work out new and interesting activities, which haven’t been tried before, instead of applying already existing ideas. That part of the rationale of being a university museum.

• For example, we’ve experimented with very narrow exhibition formats, e.g. in the Obesity exhibition, which is not a historical exhibition about obesity as a cultural phenomenon, but focuses on a very special kind of surgical operation, called gastric bypass, and other cutting-edge metabolic research projects at the medical faculty. The experimental attitude here was to try transforming some of the basic concepts and aesthetic aspects of the clinic and medical research laboratory into the exhibition space.
• Another example is our current temporary exhibition Biohacking, which is an experiment in bringing do-it-yourself biology activists into the museum, letting them coproduce a combination of working laboratory, exhibition room, event and public conference around the topic of biohacking.
• A third example is that we’re experimenting with the borderlines between research seminar, curatorial workspace and event. Last week we organized an international workshop called It’s Not What You Think, where we gathered some 40 scholars to not only discuss but also to handle and curate objects in our collections.

To have a research attitude in these and other cases means not only to conceive and perform them as experiments, but also allow time to reflect upon the experiments, and write about and publish them – to bring the experiences into the public sphere. So we still publish a lot in traditional research journals, but increasingly we’ve begun to experiment with the publication medium. So we’re putting a lot emphasis on using a variety of social media – our combined blog and website, Facebook, Google+, and especially Twitter as a medium for discussing the experiments.

Summing up, in my view, museum should, to a much larger extent, become ‘museological laboratories’. Actually, I don’t think museology, or museum studies, should be taught in courses in academic departments separated from museum practice. Museology is not a set of dogmas or principles that can be learned from textbooks and lectures and then applied in museums — it is an experimental and research attitude that must permeat the daily museum work from early morning to late evening.

Det er med stor sorg, at vi har modtaget meddelelsen om, at vores publikumsmedarbejder gennem godt fire år, Anni Harris, er afgået ved døden, 65 år gammel.

Anni kom til Medicinsk Museion i efteråret 2009, hvor hun blev udvalgt i et felt af over 300 ansøgere. Vi fornemmede et menneske, der kunne være såvel struktureret som imødekommende og serviceminded – egenskaber, der er helt essentielle i jobbet som museets ansigt og stemme udadtil.

At det var det helt rigtige valg fik både vi og museets mange besøgende meget hurtigt at mærke. Det var Anni, der tog museets telefon og stod for bookning af omvisninger og andre arrangementer i vores lokaler, og det var Anni der havde den daglige kontakt til vores korps af studentermedhjælpere.

Ingen der var i kontakt med Anni, var i tvivl om hendes engagement og store omsorg for alles ve og vel og hendes store interesse for de faglige aktiviteter. Selvom Anni fik konstateret en alvorlig sygdom for knapt to år siden, mistede hun aldrig humøret. Hun insisterede på at arbejde gennem hele sygdomsforløbet, og hun passede sine opgaver til det allersidste.

Vi vil især huske Anni for hendes lyse tilgang til verden og hendes smilende og imødekommende væsen.

Begravelsen har fundet sted i stilhed.

Personalet på Medicinsk Museion

I’ve had this call for papers for the ‘The Return of Biography: Reassessing Life Stories in Science Studies’ workshop at Science Museum on 18 July laying on my desktop for months:

The lived life serves as an organising principle across disciplines. We talk of the biographies of things and places, and we use personal narratives to give shape to history. Biography is central to historians’ work but often unacknowledged and untheorised: it is used to inspire and to set examples, and to order our thinking about the world, but is a primarily a literary mode; biographies written for popular audiences provide material for the most abstruse work across disciplines; and the canon of well-known lives dictates fashions in research.
For historians of science, technology and medicine this is a particularly pressing issue: their discipline is founded on the ‘great men’ account of discovery and advance, and, though that has long since been discarded, the role of the individual in historical narratives has not diminished, and heroic tales have themselves become a legitimate subject of inquiry. For writers and researchers in other fields, the question remains: how do the lives of individuals intersect with cultural trends and collective enterprise?

It has been laying there since November because there are so many different things in it I would like to take issue with:

– Isn’t the notion of ‘return’ of biography long overdue?

– Does the notion of ‘biographies’ of things and places make sense?

– Are biography and historiography necessarily narrative (story-telling) genres?

– Is it really true that the role of the individual in historical writing hasn’t diminished?

But given the restriction of a 20 minutes talk and my need to say something new, I eventually found out (but not until deadline day, last Friday) that I would rather like to engage with the explicit occasion for the workshop meeting — Science Museum’s Turing-exhibition —  and ask whether biographical museum exhibitions are really possible?

I have to confess I haven’t seen Codebreaker yet — but will certainly do so, before the workshop (and if my abstract is accepted).

However, I have long been thinking about making a biographical exhibition here at Medical Museion. I would like to be able to combine the two major strands of my scholarly life so far, which are (1) writing (about) biography and (2) curating (and reflecting on) the use of material artefacts in science museum exhibitions on the other.

So far, however, I haven’t really seriously tried — and I think there are two reasons for this lack of action from my side.

One is more conceptual, having to do with the uncertain role of material things in the life-courses of scientists as opposed to the role of ideas, concepts, writing, etc. Symbols and text on paper and images have such a prominent place in the self-awareness of scientists. Just read their autobiographies; there are ideas, concepts, theories etc. on every page. But material artefacts play a much more humble role in the way scientists understand themselves in interviews and autobiographical reports.

The other reason is more practical: scientists like to save documents and images from their work for the archives and archives are by tradition often organised in person-defined document collections. But scientists rarely donate the material things they have worked with to museum collections. Material artefacts are mostly collected by museum with an eye to the historical importance of the things rather than as personal material archives.

All this makes it difficult to display the material life of an individual scientist. The ‘material turn’ in the humanities doesn’t easily translate into artefact-based museum exhibitions about lives in science.

(featured image: cover of T. Soderqvist, ed., The History and Poetics of Scientific Biography, Ashgate 2007)

Here’s my short speech at the opening of Biohacking: Do it yourself! last Thursday evening:

In true hacker style, this opening is somewhat ad hoc-ish. We will spend about 20 minutes up here in the old auditorium; several people will say a few introductory words each, in several languages.

Then — because there isn’t room for us all down there — the speakers will go downstairs to the biohacker lab, where they will make the official opening (clip, clip with the scissor) while the web camera projects on the screen. And finally you will get drinks and popcorn from the microwave while you can move freely around between this floor and the biohacker lab.

So why are we doing this? What’s a biohacker lab doing in a medical museum and in this venerable old building from 1787? It’s not an irrelevant question, because some of our visitors think a museum like ours should restrict itself to real medical history – the history of epidemic diseases, surgical instruments from the 18th and 19th enturies, gory human body parts etc.

OK, believe it or not, we’re still in the history business. We’re still displaying things from the gruesome medical past. But we are also very eager to engage with the present and the future. As some of you know,  our latest exhibition is about the current obesity epidemic and the brand new treatment method called gastric bypass surgery that accidentally also cures type 2 diabetes.

In the exhibition (or rather installation) you’ll see tonight, we’re taking yet another step away from the past, to the future of biology and medicine — to the emerging worlds of synthetic biology and biohacking.

Other speakers will say more about synthetic biology and biohacking in a few moments. I’ll just give you the background to this project.

The idea behind the exhibition/installation started three years ago, when some ten small European science centers and art institutions met at Le Laboratorie in Paris to prepare an application from the European Community for an art-science project, called StudioLab.

One of the themes we decided on at the Paris meeting synthetic biology – a very hot topic among life scientists. Using small parts of life to build more complicated living parts. Like in the famous Lego bricks.

What was then, three years ago, a pretty vague idea, has now materialized in a very concrete art-design-science installation –thanks to an interdisciplinary collaboration between a couple of biohackers and scientists, an installation designer, a science communication specialist and a historian of ancient technology. They come from the UK, Germany, the United States, and Denmark, so this is a truly international project team, based locally here in Copenhagen.

Before I give the word over to these people who made this come true, I will say that it hasn’t escaped my notice that the idea of biohacking may have further implications for a museums like ours, and maybe for museums in general.

Because there’s something in the hacker culture – whether it’s computer hacking or biohacking – that points to the ongoing cultural change in the museum world. As I said to one of the biohackers at dinner earlier tonight: museums are struggling to become more open, to involve their users, to draw on the creativity of non-professionals, to crowdsource the cultural heritage, to engage citizens in the construction and re-construction of collections and exhibitions. The do-it-yourself attitude is spreading to museums too.

This is what some museum people call ‘museum 2.0‘. It’s pretty similar to what social media are doing to the world of publishing right now. Or what biohackers are trying to do for the life sciences.

As a museum I think we have very much to learn from the hacking culture – and I’m proud that we have been able to engage people from the local biohacker community here in Copenhagen to help us – not only to open this particular installation – but in the long run help us rethink what a museum might be.

Now, I will give the word to Rüdiger Trojok, a molecular biologist who’s currently finishing his Masters at the Technical University of Denmark; Malthe Borch, who has a masters in Biological engineering, and who’s a co-founder of the local biohacker space BiologiGaragen here in Copenhagen; and Sara Krugman, who’s an interaction designer, and currently completing her masters at The Copenhagen School of Interaction Design.

(Rüdiger, Malthe and Sara give short speeches)

Thank you, Rüdiger, Malthe and Sara! And now over to Emil Polny, who’s a project coordinator at the Center for Synthetic Biology here at the University of Copenhagen.

(Emil gives a short speech)

Thank you, Emil! And finally I’ll give the word to the people here at Medical Museion who have organised and curated the biohacking space, namely Karin Tybjerg, who’s an associate professor with a background in the history of science and technology and Louise Whiteley, who’s assistant professor with a background in theoretical neuroscience and science communication studies.

(Karin and Louise give short speeches)

Thank you Karin and Louise! And now comes the tricky logistical part of the opening. I will ask you all to wait here for two minutes – and we’ll show a short video while you wait — while our presenters walk down to the biohacking lab to open it. The reason is the lab room is so small, we cannot all be in there – so they will cut the ribbon in front of a video camera – and we’ll transmit it over the web and stream up on the screen behind me. And after they have cut the ribbon you can do whatever you want – take drink, eat some popcorn, sit and talk – or even go down and visit the biohacker space.

Thank you very much!  Enjoy your evening.

Here are some of the objects that were demonstrated (touched, fingered, fondled, caressed, stroken etc.) during the touching seminar yesterday.

Here are bundles of hair from an often-caressed cat:

And here is a toy: 

 

At least two participants brought coffee/tea mugs, and two of us chose to bring small objects that they like to play with to distract their thoughts, a chestnut and some paper clips:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A cool computer mouse, of course: 

And so on and so forth:

And I, finally, brought my office chessboard, to illustrate the question whether chess is a purely cognitive game, or if the enjoyment is enhanced by playing it tactically: 

 

 

 

 

 

This seminar was an appetiser only. We’ll soon be back with discussions about tactile aesthetics in museums in general and science and medical museums in particular.

Next scheduled event in the material aesthetics meeting series is the workshop IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK: COMMUNICATING MEDICAL MATERIALITIES, which we organise here at Medical Museion 8-9 March with about 30 participants.

During the last 48 hours my mind has mulled over the latest announcement for Medical Museion’s internal Thursday lunch seminar series — with our own PhD student Emma Peterson, who will present her work on methods for investigating tactile aesthetics.

It’s a PhD project within the framework of Jan Eric Olséns project on the history of blindness from a material culture perspective. That’s a very interesting project in itself, but that’s not what has occupied my mind the last two days.

What has kept me busy is that Emma’s seminar will not be a conventional academic presentation only; she has announced that it’s better called an “experiment”, because she wants all of us each to “bring an everyday object you enjoy touching”.

I find this assignment very provocative. Not only because a combination of ordinary embarassment and university etiquette will probably keep us from bringing some our most enjoyable touch objects to the seminar table. But also because I’m really at loss when it comes to selecting an everyday object I really enjoy touching.

Not because I don’t like touching things. I usually do. But because I’m not used to reflect on the act of touching — and selecting an object forces me to think more systematically about the role of touch among my personal everyday aesthetic preferences.

I’m used to reflect about my visual and auditory preferences. I know exactly which books I enjoy reading because they produce pleasurable imaginations in my mind. Same with films and images I enjoy viewing.

I can also easily make a long list of people I enjoy being together with (and a somewhat shorter of people whose company I don’t enjoy). Or birds voices I like listening to. Or places I like to come back to. Or houses I like being in. And so on: cities, landscapes, streets, museums, etc.

But material things I enjoy touching? My first thought was that I have a favourite tooth-brush, which I like holding in my hand. Then I came to think of some of our plates and cutlery at home that not only look nice, but also feel good to handle. And then I thought some of my clothes are better ‘touch objects’ for my skin than others.

Then I remembered that holding a baby is extremely enjoyable (but are babies ‘objects´?). And besides, as soon as we get into people-things, the discussion about the enjoyment of touching becomes charged.

Back to impersonal thing-touch. The iPhone, of course — a recent and very enjoyable touch object. The iPad too feels good to finger. Which made me think of books, not as objects of reading, but as objects of handling. The experience of reading a good book in hardback cover in certainly enjoyable — maybe that’s why people still buy hardbacks?

And then a whole tsunami of material objects came welling up. The touch of grass in the summer, the sense of forming snow balls in the winter. Holding a piece of raw wood. Stroking a raw stone surface. Caressing the cat …

Still, after 48 hours, Emma’s assignment for our Thursday seminar, occupies my thoughts. I’ve suddenly begun deliberately touching objects at home to find out which of them I really like (not many it turns out).

And I’m thinking: What does my ‘life of touching’ actually feel like? Which objects are pleasurable? Which enrich my everyday? Are scientific, medical or health-related objects among these?

This is going to be a radically mind-expanding seminar.

(feature image: ‘The Touch’, from R.W. Wertz and D.C. Wertz, Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America, 1989)

I just read about a great museum initiative in London — the Museums Showoff.

You may have heard about Science Showoff — a forum for all kinds of people working with science communication, who meet and share their work in a performance-based way, “and then chew it over with a pint in hand”. It’s very participatory, non-hierachical, and democratic — in other words, very Multitudinous.

Museums Showoff is the sister to Science Showoff, using the same basic idea and format “but filling the stage with people who work in, study or are interested in museums, libraries and collections rather than science” — “an open mic night featuring curators, conservators, librarians, collectors, Museum Studies students, archaeologists, social historians, educators, multimedia developers, explainers, visitors, theorists and everyone else associated with museums and library special collections” (I think they’ve listed all the relevant categories).

The format for this low-budget bimonthly event is emulation-worthy:

There are ten slots for presentation — each slot is 9 minutes each; some are for invited guests, others for first-come-first-slotted. After a short intro the signed-up performers take to the stage, where they might:

Show and tell:

• Their new acquisition
• Their favourite or a ‘star’ object from their collection
• An interesting find from the stores
• Something they’ve conserved
• Their current research
• Run a group handling session
• Tell us about something they’ve dug up
• Describe the weirdest thing in their collection

Pitch:

• Their idea for their next exhibition
• The most recent object their collection should acquire or dispose of
• Road test ideas for exhibitions/public programmes/galleries
• Tell us what a museum should be collecting and how
• Tell us about research into what museums are doing and why
• Demonstrate new digital projects/ideas/concepts

Or generally show off :

• Showing a film or oral history project they’ve just made
• Trying out a new demo or interactive exhibit
• Practicing a new museum-based comedy set
• Reading their latest poem/performing an interpretive dance about their museum work
• Performing an 9-minute play aimed at museum audiences
• Play their new song about the Tudors
• Re-enact an historical event
• Tell us about the latest behind-the-scenes goings on at their organization…

Or anything else!

With intermissions etc. they finish 2 1/2 hours later and then go over to beer and chatting.

Next Museums Showoff takes place on Thursday 17 January, with the following presenters:

Steve Cross – will be our compère for the night. What will he say about the Science Museum this time?

Katherine Curran – “Heritage Smells or The Terrible Fate of Tropical Ken”. Delivered entirely in verse, this will be both a description of my research project and an account of the dreadful things that happened to a Ken doll who found himself in one of UCL’s laboratories.

Danny Birchall ­– Why wrap the Freud Museum in ropes made of doll’s hair? Danny will present a lightning tour of artists’ interventions in museum spaces, from notorious pisstaker Marcel Duchamp to neo-neuroticist Alice Anderson.

Alice Bell ­– Why the very idea of a science museum is just plain silly, but if we’re going to have them they should be less like Harrods and more like a junk yard.

Alison Boyle & Harry Cliff – Higgs bosons, hadrons, high-energy physics … it’s a huge and incredibly complex machine, with lots of people busy doing things that nobody else understands. But that’s enough about the Science Museum. Find out what happened when Harry met Ali and the world of museums collided with the world of CERN.

Researchers in Museums – Gemma Angel, Sarah Chaney, Suzanne Harvey, Felicity Winkley, Lisa Plotkin, Tzu-i Liao and Alicia Thornton are a UCL-based gestalt entity whose mission is to engage the public with their research and UCL’s museum collections in ways never before explored. Bringing together their expertise in diverse subject areas, the team presents “Foreign Bodies” – their very first interdisciplinary group-curated exhibition, which opens in February 2013 at UCL.

Peter Ride – #Citizencurators was a twitter project that ran during the 2012 Olympics organised by Museum of London and Univ of Westminster. It’s goal was to collect Londoners response to living in London during the games – a social history for the museum collection. But it also also asked the question how can a museum collect tweets – as database, a visual object or a string of individual lines?

Hayley Kruger – is going to talk about some of the stranger steps on the path that paved the way to modern blood donation and provides a salutary warning of why it is unwise to be related to an anatomist and predecease them…!

The Ministry of Curiosity – will be recruiting for the newly founded collective dedicated to London’s museum social scene.

Jason Webber – Come the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, which Museum will give you the best chance of survival? Who has the collection and venue to hold off the slaving hordes of the un-dead?

At the Wilmington Arms, 69 Rosebery Ave, Clerkenwell, London, starting at 7pm.

Do I need to say I hope they’re live-streaming the whole event. Otherwise, I’m seriously contemplating producing some carbon dioxide to get a chance to hear Alice Bell argue for why science museums should be more like junk yards than department stores.

(Junk yard poster, credit: http://www.hiskohulsing.com/animated-films/junkyard)

(Thanks to David Pantalony for reminding me that you don’t easily burn carbon dioxide off 🙂