A research spirit and experimental attitude in museums
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, whe...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Söderqvist Tags: aesthetics Source Type: blogs
More News: Academia | Biology | Blogging | Budgets | Conferences | Eating Disorders & Weight Management | Gastroenterology | Health | History of Medicine | Laboratory Medicine | Medical Scientists | Men | Obesity | Research | Science | Study | Teaching | Universities & Medical Training | Websites | Workshops