Thomas Söderqvist (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen)
The Medical Museion concept — exploring the culture of biomedicine in the age of globalisation
The Medical Museion concept addresses an expressed need for renewal of the institution of the university museum in an age characterised by globalisation, increasing immaterial production, and high-tech biomedicine. Organisationally a department at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, the Medical Museion has grown out of the university’s old medical history museum. The concept is twofold: first, the idea is to break down the barriers between a conventional academic textual history of medicine on the one hand, and a traditional curatorial focus on collecting and displaying material objects on the other; secondly, the museion concept implies a focus on the recent history and current state of biomedical science and technology and their social, cultural and political consequences. Thus the Medical Museion is neither a museum, nor a research and teaching department, but an amalgamation of both. By focusing on recent biomedicine we are presently trying to integrate four modes of inquiry: first, research into the history and material culture of global biomedicine; second, engaging medical and public health students in a critical dialogue about the historical and cultural context of genomic and postgenomic medicine; third, collecting and preserving the recent biomedical heritage, including artefacts, iconography and documents; and finally promoting public engagement in the problems raised by recent biomedical science and technology, primarily through exhibitions that express new ways of thinking in museology and ‘cultural poetics’. The Medical Museion concept raises a number of questions concerning the future of university museums, e.g., How to handle the spectre of globalisation? How to deal with the nature of scientific and technological ‘objects’ in postmodernity? How to understand the role of the humanities in a ‘leisure economy’? And how to make use of the classical hidden treasures in our collections in a way that addresses contemporary sensibilities?
