Museums theme – making Split + Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine

Fleming, Martha

Museums theme – making Split + Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine

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Journal article

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Fleming, Martha

Date published

November 15, 2017

Abstract

The wide-ranging personal experiences of medicine that people bring with them on their visits to medical museums arguably give medicine an advantage over the histories and material culture of other technologies and sciences. No other science has ‘content’ that is held quite so deeply inside the visitor’s conscious substance and psyche. But if mis-handled through sensationalism, this can easily backfire, catapulting the visitor into a state of fear and abjection. This article outlines a sustained and award-winning temporary exhibition project that aimed to engage visitors by locating them in the engine room of biomedicine rather than the operating theatre. Four post-doctoral historians of contemporary medicine and a creative director worked together with exhibition designers in a research context to show how epistemology can be dovetailed with aesthetics to bring theory and practice together for a wider public at Medical Museion, Copenhagen.