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Wounded – an exhibition out of time
Calling on the Science Museum’s First World War exhibition Wounded: Conflict, Casualties and Care, this article outlines the challenges of curating a coherent display within such a vast context. It also explores how the narrative and interpretive approaches taken were influenced by an earlier, unrealised proposal – one whose bold concept was reflected in the rewarding and sometimes unexpected qualities that emerged in the final exhibition.
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The valuable role of risky histories: exhibiting disability, race and reproduction in medical museums
The changing representation of disability, race and mental health in European medical museums and the under-representation of reproduction; ‘risks’ involved in exhibiting related collections, and strategies to help rehabilitate these topics and their material culture in the future medical museum.
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Review: Cabinet of Curiosities: How disability was kept in a box
A review of the award-winning performance piece by Mat Fraser, exploring how the kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of perspectives and communication, from lecture to rap, creates perhaps the most direct challenge to medical museums ever posed.
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Rather unspectacular: design choices in National Health Service glasses
This article discusses the provision of spectacles under the NHS scheme in Britain from 1946-86. It reveals there was no explicit consideration of consumer choice or fashion and argues that this limited design across the British optical industry.
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Prosthetic limbs on display: from maker to user
We reflect upon the way that prosthetic users have been represented in displays at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and National Museums Scotland. In particular, we assess how far user/patient voice balances clinical/technical narratives.
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Private portraits or suffering
This paper explores the challenges and history of medical photography as sensitive objects in a museum context. It discusses how medical photographs have been treated over time in historical and museological terms.
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Curating Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries
The curators of Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries reflect on their experiences of creating these significant new displays at the Science Museum in London.