RT Journal Article
T1 The valuable role of risky histories: exhibiting disability, race and reproduction in medical museums
A1 Manon Parry
YR 2021
VO Special issue: Curating medicine
IS Autumn 2020
K1 collections
K1 disability
K1 exhibitions
K1 material culture
K1 Medical museums
K1 mental health
K1 public engagement
K1 race
K1 racial science
K1 sexuality and reproduction
AB 
NO Renovated museums include the Narrenturm Museum (2018) and the Josephinum Museum, Vienna (on-going); Museum Ovartaci, Aarhus (2019); the Teknisk Museum, Oslo (on-going) and the Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds (2019–). The Medical History Museum in Hamburg opened in 2010 and the Croatian Museum of Medicine and Pharmacy in 2015; RSU Anatomy Museum at Rīga Stradiņš University is scheduled to open in 2020. New museums are under consideration at Catholic University, Leuven (KU Leuven), and Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
NO The project was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and will conclude with a book, Human Curiosities: The Social Relevance of Medical Museums, to be published in 2021.
NO Criticisms of the Body Worlds project have arisen over the issue of informed consent and the commercial spectacle of public anatomies. On this and scandals surrounding misuse of human remains, see Rina Knoeff, ‘Ball Pool Anatomy: On the Public Veneration of Anatomical Relics’, in Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg (eds), 2015, The Fate of Anatomical Collections: The History of Medicine in Context (Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, VT: Ashgate), p 279.
NO The RCMG team who initiated and managed the project were Jocelyn Dodd, Richard Sandell, Debbie Jolly and Ceri Jones, and the participating museums were Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery; Colchester Castle Museum; Lives in Motion, Glasgow Museum of Transport; Conflict and Disability, Imperial War Museum London; Northampton Museum and Art Gallery; Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum; Stamford Museum; One in Four, Tyne and Wear Museums; Whitby Museum.
NO Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, London; Royal College of Physicians Museum, London; Science Museum, London; Royal London Hospital Museum and Archive, London; Langdon Down Museum of Learning Disability, Normansfield, Middlesex; Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Beckenham, Kent; Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds; Surgeons' Hall Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh.
NO Examples of such projects were presented at the European Association of Museums of the history of Medical Sciences, in Barcelona 2018 (Sophie Goggins, Scotland and Ilze Sirmā, Ieva Lībiete, Latvia), and Groningen 2016 (Alfons Zarzoso, Spain).
NO As noted by Bart Grob, during a tour of the exhibitions which he provided for attendees of the ‘Race in the Medical Museum: Collections and Exhibitions’, 22 November 2019.
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/201406
UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/risky-histories/
WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30