Research

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Research profile

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Research profile 1999-2005

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Research profile 2005-2009

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Current research profile

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Current research projects

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Medical science communication

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Earlier research projects

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Biomedicine on Display

In 2005-2009, the Novo Nordisk Foundation supported a combined research, curatorial project and public outreach project at Medical Museion titled Biomedicine on Display.

The aim of the project was to provide the research basis for a renewal of the museum by developing an integrated research and curatorial programme for acquisitions and exhibitions with a focus on contemporary biomedicine:

Medical Museion is meant to be an international exemplar for how historians and curators could handle the recent biomedicical past in mutually supportive practices and within a common theoretical framework. […] The aim of this project is […] to work out a comprehensive framework for the integration of a historiographical and museological approach to recent biomedicine.

Core project group:
• Thomas Söderqvist, professor (PI)
• Søren Bak-Jensen, ph.d., postdoc
• Susanne Bauer, ph.d., postdoc
• Sniff Andersen Nexø, ph.d., postdoc
• Jan Eric Olsén, ph.d, postdoc
• Adam Bencard, cand.mag, ph.d.-student; research assistant
• Hanne Jessen, mag.scient, ph.d.-student

Associated project members for shorter periods:
• Camilla Mordhorst, ph.d., assistant professor
• Martha Fleming, ph.d., associate professor; senior exhibition curator
• Ion Meyer, cand.scient.kons., senior conservator
• Anna Sommer Møller, cand.mag., curatorial assistant
• Rikke Vindberg, cand.mag, curatorial assistant
• Jonas Paludan, cand.mag., curatorial assistant
• Morten Bülow, cand.mag., research assistant

Overview of the project chronology

The project had a slow start in 2005 until all the postdocs and PhD students had been selected and employed by 1 November 2005. Throughout 2006 and 2007, the joint activity level was very high, with regular seminars, invited guest lectures and workshops, collecting, exhibition making and a lot of travelling and conference attendance. In 2008 the project went into a article production-phase; as a result the in-house seminars and guest lectures ceased and conference travel activities decreased considerably. Finally, in 2008-2009, the group gathered around the final exhibition, Split & Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine. The project ended by 30 June 2009.

Publications

For a full list of publications from the Biomedicine on Display project, see here.

Exhibitions

From the beginning, exhibition making was thought of as an integral part of the curatorial dimension of the project. However, rather than producing popular exhibitions as a goal in itself, the main purpose of the exhibition activities was to contribute to a collective museological learning process – to reflect on how exhibitions can mediate between research, acquisitioning and public outreach. In other words, the aim was to experiment with different means of expression to make contemporary biomedicine visible and familiar to a larger, general public.

The following exhibitions/installations have been made in the course of this experimental approach to exhibition making:

• The first small (50m2) temporary exhibition “Alle har ret til ønskebørn – om prævention og familieplanlægning i 50 år”, 4 February – 1 October 2006, curated by Camilla Mordhorst. A small, object-rich exhibition, the first in a series, which emphasised the material culture of medicine and public health. The exhibition largely utilised the museum’s own collections and did not involve much new research.

• The street window exhibition “Sygdommens ansigt”, 24 August – 15 October 2006, curated by the artist group Huskegruppen in co-operation with Medical Museion, took Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Illness as Metaphor” (1978) as the point of departure. This was our first experience of working together with artists.

• The permanent gallery on psychiatry (75m2) was set up in 2006, curated by Camilla Mordhorst in co-operation with ph.d.-student Jesper V. Kragh, who was then about to finish his thesis on the history of somatic psychiatry, especially lobotomy, in Denmark. It contained a mixture of existing material in our collections and new acquisitions from psychatric clinics in the Copenhagen area. As such it is a nice example of how artefacts from contemporary biomedicine works together with older material and also an example of co-operation between research and exhbition making.

• ”Rigshospitalet før, nu – og i fremtiden”, 30 March – 31 December 2007, a 250m2 exhibition in the main entrance hall of the National Hospital. The exhibition was funded by the hospital, curated by cand.mag. Rikke Vindberg under supervision of Camilla Mordhorst in co-operation with hospital staff. It involved extensive on-site research and acquisitions of objects from laboratories and wards, and was thus an example of how to make an exhibition about contemporary biomedicine in dialogue with a hospital.

• In connection with the international workshop and conference on “Biomedicine and Art”, 30 August – 3 September 2007, we commisioned an artwork installation by sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard on the theme biomedicine and sound art. The resultat was “Labyrinthitis”, a sound installation based on current research at the Centre for Applied Hearing Research, Technical University of Denmark, on the physiology and dynamic anatomy of the inner ear; it was performed on 2 September 2007.

• “Oldetopia – en udstilling om alder og aldring”, 11 October 2007 – 14 December 2008 (250m2), co-funded by Assens Fond/Biofarma Logistik and curated by Camilla Mordhorst, was our first big temporary exhibition and also a great public success. “Oldetopia” put into practice our focus on contemporary biomedicine in a social, cultural and historical context, and was the first exhibition in which we deliberately thought in terms of the museological notion of presence effects of material objects. It involved co-operation with medical researchers and drew on new acquisitions, and thus exemplified the close integration between (museological and medical) research, acquisitioning and exhibition design.

• “100 lysår”, 11 October 2007 – 13 May 2009, was a small photo exhibition (50m2) curated by by Liv Carlé Mortensen, who documented the lives of 15 centenarians in photo montages in connection with “Oldetopia”. It had little research content and did not involve any material from contemporary biomedicine.

• “The History of Anesthesiology and Intensive Medicine in Denmark”, 31 May – 3 June 2008, was a small (100m2) exhibition curated by Søren Bak-Jensen in connection with the 2008 Annual Meeting of the European Society for Anesthesiology (Euroanaesthesia 2008) at Bella Congress Center, Copenhagen. It displayed objects related to the treatment of polio victims during the epidemic in Copenhagen in 1952, the establishment of the first intensive care units in Copenhagen hospitals, and the development of equipment for monitoring anesthetised patients from the 1950s to the present. Besides drawing approx. 2500 visitors in three days, its main importance was as a museological experiment in creating exhibitions in co-operation with external partners, including medical devices companies, in an extra-museum setting, and with a keen eye on the aesthetics of historical medical objects.

• “Design4Science”, 21 January – 12 April 2009, a medium-sized (200m2) temporary exhibition curated by Shirley Wheeler, Sunderland University. The borrowing and adaption to the museum rooms in Bredgade was supported by the Lundbeck Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation together. “Design4Science” further sustained our interest in the history of contemporary biomedicine, but did not involve any research or collecting from our side.

• “Blikfang og blærebilleder: Forskning i posterformat”, 25 May – 13 December 2009, was curated by cand. mag. Rikke Vindberg as a spin-off from her earlier combined research and acquisition project on scientific posters. The objects were collected in co-operation with researchers at the National Hospital and the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen. This little exhibition too marks the transition towards a more aesthetically conscious exhibition practice.

• ”Hel+Del: Brudstykker fra biomedicinens tid” [Split+Splice. Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine], 11 June – 13 December 2009, a 250m2 temporary exhibition curated by Canadian artist/designer Martha Fleming in cooperation with Sniff Andersen Nexø, Søren Bak-Jensen, Susanne Bauer, and Jan Eric Olsén. “Split+Splice” is the culmination of the integrated research and curatorial NNF-supported project at Medical Museion. It builds on the individual research and acquisitions projects of the junior members of the research team. For example, room 1 (flydende overgange) is largely based on the Søren Bak-Jensen’s acquisition of objects from the former Protein Laboratory at the University of Copenhagen; room 2 (at fastholde en strøm) is based on seminar discussions over the last two years; room 3 (laviner af data) is based on Susanne Bauer’s research project; room 4 (reality show) is largely based on Sniff Nexø’s project; room 5 (i kødet, under huden) is based on Jan Eric Olsén’s project; room 6 (masseobservation) is based on Jan Eric Olsén and Susanne Bauer’s joint work; the ideas for rooms 7-9 grew during the exhibition planning process; room 10 has been created in consultaton with Jesper V. Kragh; and room 11 (et billede på nethinden) is based on Jan Eric Olsén fascination with the history of endoscopes. All rooms thus bear the mark of individual research projects – yet through the unifying eye of the lead designer and curator, Martha Fleming. “Split+Splice” involved quite a lot of collecting and is thus also the culmination of the ambition of this project to integrate research, collecting and exhibition making.

• “Primary Substances: Treasures from the history of protein research”, 4 September – 15 December 2009, curated by Thomas Söderqvist for the Faculty of Health Sciences in connection with the opening of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Protein Research and funded independently from this project by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. While “Split+Splice” grew out of a research project, “Primary Substances” will hopefully give rise to a research project (on the contemporary material and visual history of protein research), which in turn will hopefully give rise to a larger exhibition on the history of proteins. The exhibition has involved a large number of researchers and companies in the region and thus also serves as a model for how exhibition making can be a co-operative effort between historians, museologists, biomedical scientists and the production and marketing departments of private enterprises. In contrast to “Split+Splice”, “Primary Substances” is an attempt to balance between the ‘production of presence’ and the ‘production of meaning’.

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