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What happens if one lets an entire congress of specialists in the field of neuroaesthetics loose in our temporary exhibition Split and Splice. Fragments from the age of biomedicine? I have no idea – but I intend to find out. In September the University of Copenhagen is host to The Copenhagen Neuroaesthetics Conference and the […]

Another object-oriented conference is coming up, this one organised by CRESC (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change) at the University of Manchester. The list of speakers looks very promising (I’d particularly like to hear Graham Harman, as his work on object-philosophy is extremely intriguing). Here is an excerpt from the conference description: As contemporary social […]

Excellent comment on the alleged Chinese ‘tradition’ for organ trafficking: Organ Donor Dolls by David Foox, who created these designer vinyl toys in order to bring awareness to the issue of organ transplant and donation. Currently China undertakes around 10,000 organ transplants per year (about the same as the US). (Thanks to Vanessa for the tip)

Split + Splice, Del + Hel, is about the inter-relations between the culture of biomedicine and the enormous complexities of 21st century living.  The exhibition explores these complexities through the material culture, objects and instruments used by biomedical practitioners in research and in clinical activities. Much as biomedicine itself, Split + Splice is an innovative […]

The Akismet filter doesn’t work 100%, so we get a handful of spam comments for moderation each week. They are almost always deleted after a short glance, of course. For the two last weeks, however, a certain dtpizk[at]yahoo.com has passed through the spam filter with a wave of comments, which are sort of interesting — a series of short, vague and polite comments about how great a particular post or […]

Despite our current low posting frequency, the new blog-ranking service BlogRank has Biomedicine on Display as #7 on their museum blogs top 25-list.

One of the lasting positive impacts of social constructivism on the history of medicine is the notion that diseases are a social constructs. This is not to deny, of course, that there is a biological substrate for illnesses and conditions that lead to the specific deterioration of bodily functions and ultimately to the death of the organism. It just […]

We are usually covering contemporary biomedicine on display on this blog, but sometimes older stuff gets its way into this column as well. The occasion today is to draw attention to John Harley Warner and Jim Edmondson’s wonderfully illustrated book Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in America, 1880-1930, which has received very good […]

Jon Agar at UCL’s Department of Science and Technology Studies quotes an ‘intriguing announcement’ for the new series of BBC Radio 4’s Leading Edge broadcast: For the past decade this programme’s principal concern has been with the products of science with its findings whether a freshly disinterred fossil, or a distant galaxy, a recent observation or a […]

The Nordic/Baltic Network Gender, Body, and Health based at the Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, is organizing a meeting under the theme “Dimensions of Pain”. The Network, which gathers researchers and practitioners from diverse fields as medicine, comparative literature, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, sports- and health sciences, psychiatry and history of science, invites submissions for […]

Joanna Ebenstein’s exhibition “Morbid Anatomy Cabinet or Gallery as Wunderkammer” has just opened at the Barrister’s Gallery in New Orleans. Find out more about the show on her blog here. Excellent images!

Last night, I had a couple of beers with an American bioartist and some of his friends. I have always been somewhat sceptical about what is going on in so called genomic art, and after my first pint of Herslev Pale Ale, I suddenly found myself saying: ‘Genomic art is so much last year’. My guest protested vigorously, probably because […]