Science Museum Group Journal Issue 14

Sarah Wade guest edits this special issue, which charts examples of curating medicine from the perspective of practitioners themselves. Brenda Malone discusses a Rapid Response Collecting project to capture the material culture of the Irish Abortion Referendum, highlighting its role in generating new contemporary collecting strategies for the National Museum of Ireland. Ken Arnold and Danielle Olsen reflect on what they learned from the process of running Contagious Cities, a huge international project co-ordinated by the Wellcome Trust, and Manon Parry looks at evolving trends in the display of medicine, especially the treatment of themes such as disability and decolonialism, in museums across Europe. The role of art in medicine exhibitions is discussed in depth here. George Vasey considers the role art can play in the presentation of uncomfortable themes such as illness and death, as he reflects on the Wellcome Trust’s Misbehaving Bodies exhibition. Katy Barrett interviews various artists connected to the Science Museum’s Medicine galleries while continuing to explore what it means to be an art curator in a science museum. Jà¶rn Wolters presents the Journal’s first photo essay, which visually documents AIDS memorials since the early 1980s, charting an evolution from informal projects to more formal, institutionally led approaches and making a case for their status as cultural heritage. Finally, in a co-authored paper the curators of the Science Museum’s new permanent exhibition – Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries – reflect on the main themes and questions that guided the exhibition development and consider what they learned for future displays.

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AIDS memorials from obituaries to artworks – a photo essay
(2021-01-19)
Wolters, Jorn
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Misbehaving Bodies: exhibiting illness
(2021-01-19)
Vasey, George
The essay explores the process of curating Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, an exhibition held at Wellcome Collection from May 2019 until January 2020. The exhibition brought together two artists of different generations who explored the representation of illness and care narratives from the perspectives of patient and lived experience. The project was co-curated by Bà¡rbara Rodràguez Muà±oz and George Vasey. The Wellcome Collection challenges how people think and feel about health and this essay explores how the exhibition built upon those ambitions. The text addresses how the content of the exhibition was supported by the various exhibition elements: narrative, process, architecture and design, interpretation and live programming.
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Rapid Response Collecting and the Irish Abortion Referendum
(2021-01-05)
Malone, Brenda
The last decade in Ireland has seen rapid societal change, including the enshrining of equal marriage and women’s right to bodily autonomy in the constitution via public referendum. In response, the National Museum of Ireland enacted a programme of collecting the material culture of such significant contemporary events in Ireland, which led to the formal establishment of the Contemporary Ireland Collection. The material culture of the referendum on the abolishment of the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution (Repeal the 8th) to allow for the legal termination of pregnancy formed the nucleus of the collection, and the rationale behind the identification of the representative themes and subsequent object choices has become the template on which further contemporary collecting is now based. This has enabled the institution and its curators to work collaboratively with the public in the expansion of its collections to fill the historic gaps and become more inclusive and representative of Ireland’s varied and difficult history.
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Artist interviews – new art for Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries
(2021-01-19)
Barrett, Katy
;
Crook, Eleanor
;
Quinn, Marc
;
Roso, Studio
Opened in November 2019, Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries showcases four major new art commissions at the Science Museum, London. This article brings artistic and curatorial voices to reflect on their meaning, as Curator of Art Collections, Katy Barrett, talks with artists Eleanor Crook, Marc Quinn, and Sophie Nielsen and Rolf Knudsen of Studio Roso. They consider the process of producing the works, what they were inspired by and what is different about working in a medical or science context. This allows Barrett to reflect on all four commissions, how they fit into the history of art at the Science Museum, what they bring to the Museum’s collections, and what can be learnt from art in looking at and understanding science.
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Curating Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries
(2021-01-19)
Bond, Sarah
;
Dabin, Katie
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Emmens, Stewart
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Hurley, Selina
;
McEnroe, Natasha
The curators of Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries reflect on their experiences of creating these significant new displays at the Science Museum in London. After summarising the historical medical displays at this museum, they outline the curatorial concepts behind their respective new galleries to explore the display strategies and processes behind the development of the new exhibits and highlight the significance of some of the objects that visitors can encounter today.
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Contagious Cities: an international collaborative enquiry
(2021-01-19)
Arnold, Ken
;
Olsen, Danielle
Contagious Cities was a cultural project that explored how urban environments in different parts of the world have coped with infectious diseases. Its theme of how populations prepare for and deal with epidemics is a core strategic concern for Wellcome – the large health and medicine foundation behind the project. Thoroughly interdisciplinary in their approach, the variety of exhibitions, events and other cultural activities the project supported placed a special emphasis on the illuminating potential for artists to investigate medical, scientific and social phenomena. The initiative also drew inspiration from Wellcome’s track record of curating interdisciplinary projects in its own museum in London, and approached its international ambitions (in Geneva, New York, Hong Kong and Berlin) through partnership and co-production. This article looks back at this unusual project, which ironically was concluded just before the world plunged into the current pandemic. The emphasis here, however, is somewhat less on the project’s themes – the fascinating and frightening implications of human co-existence with microbes in crowded contexts. Instead, we have focused on the complexities of working with multiple stakeholders in very different contexts, and we reflect on Wellcome’s role as an experienced, knowledgeable and creative, but also powerful and well-funded partner-cum-commissioner.
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Editorial
(2021-01-19)
Wade, Sarah
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The valuable role of risky histories: exhibiting disability, race and reproduction in medical museums
(2021-01-19)
Parry, Manon

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 14

Science Museum Group Journal Issue 14

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