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Today’s poetic quote on science blogging from Deepak Singh: I think all of us have bemoaned the lack of depth in mainstream scientific coverage, in the shallowness of press releases. One of the roles we [i.e., science bloggers] can play/should play is bringing reality to the science many of us love and breathe. To highlight […]

As usual, and as announced earlier, Medical Museion took part in the Copenhagen Night of Culture (Kulturnatten) — a mid-October Friday each year when hundreds of museums, galleries and other institutions in the inner city area are open all evening. We didn’t have as many visitors as we use to have — ‘only’ slightly above 2000 passed through the doors during the six opening hours. […]

Quite a few medical conditions can be seen on the visible parts of the body. Artists have sometimes used such disease signs to catch an individual’s medical identity — Henry Moore’s 1970s portrait of Dorothy Hodgkin‘s arthritic hands is a well-known example (see Patricia Fara’s article in Endeavour 2003, pp. 85-86). If the condition isn’t visible, however, few people deliberately display their disease, its symptoms or […]

Our own Camilla Mordhorst has been interviewed in the last issue of Riksutställningar’s newsletter (in Swedish). Most exhibitions in cultural history are amazingly traditional, she claims. The Wellcome Collection in London is one of the few which have developed new, exciting narrative techniques, and so has the World Culture Museum in Gothenburg. But otherwise most museums seem to be afraid of experimenting too […]

The Imagine Science Film Festival will be held 16-25 October in New York. The objective of the festival is to showcase films (especially fiction films) that “effectively incorporate science into a compelling narrative while maintaining credible scientific groundings”. The public will join scientists in learning and imagining science through visual storytelling. Films with bio/medical content […]

A couple of weeks ago we asked for a guide to restaurants and bars with medical motifs. Øystein Horgmo has kindly sent us an article in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet about the new theme restaurant Hospitalis in Riga, Latvia, which is owned by medical doctors and has a pronounced medical motif. Says my new favourite guide to Latvian culture, ‘Fucking Latvia: […]

In July we reported how ten editors of some of the leading international journals for history and philosophy of science and social studies of science had issued a joint declaration against the current attempts, initiated by the European Science Foundation, to establish a European rating system for humanities journals (ERIH). Now, two and a half months later, almost all editors of […]

Next year is 50 years since C. P. Snow delivered his famous lecture ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, suggesting that as cultured citizens we need to know as much about the second law of thermodynamics as the plays of Shakespeare. To celebrate this event, and to raise the question whether Snow’s notion has any relevance today, […]

On 21 February 2009, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, CT, are organising a one-day graduate symposium that will explore ways in which art overlaps with science, and with a focus on material objects. Possible topics are: networks of artists and scientists artist/scientist collaborations art and the natural world the philosophical concept of […]

Our high season for visitors is week 42, when Danish school children have a week off. If the weather is bad, this is particularly good for our visitor statistics, so we are looking forward to some heavy autumn rain storms that will drive hundreds, nay thousands, of young visitors to our museum. In week 42 we are open every day between 11am and 5pm. The 7-12 […]

Good news for all friends of sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard (see earlier post here), and for all fans of the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) in Culver City — Jacob has just given a sold-out performance of his inner-ear sound work ‘Labyrinthitis’ in the MJT’s Tula Tea Room. Read Jacob’s impressions from the MJT here. The Athanasius Kircher connection is obvious! Not […]

The aim of the National Pathology Week in the UK, 3-9 November is to highlight pathology’s impact on the health of the population through a range of “fun, free and exciting” events. One of the more fun- and exciting-looking ones from a medical museum point of view is ‘Autopsy: the ultimate surgical operation’, which will take place at the Hunterian Museum in London on 8 November, […]