university museums

Here’s my talk at the night of discussion titled ‘What the hell is the point of museums?’ held at Medical Museion November 3, 2016

In the spirit of this weekend’s workshop It’s Not What You Think in Copenhagen, I am posting a few observations from my visit to the Medical Museion last April. The trip originated from a discussion about a contemporary museum for the blind in Kaunus, Lithuania and what we (the sighted) could learn from an institution that […]

Here’s my short speech at the opening of Biohacking: Do it yourself! last Thursday evening: In true hacker style, this opening is somewhat ad hoc-ish. We will spend about 20 minutes up here in the old auditorium; several people will say a few introductory words each, in several languages. Then — because there isn’t room for […]

Stefanie S. Jandl and Mark S. Gold are planning an edited volume tentatively titled Academic Museums, to be published by MuseumsEtc. next summer. The volume shall examine successful strategies, tactics and activities within the academic museum community internationally, and the editors are particularly interested in innovative practical experiences that can be applied within the wider museum community Their call […]

Universeum has grown into a potentially important organisation for the revival of European university museums. The annual meetings (the 12th was held in Padua last summer) could get an important role for raising the awareness among university administrations that their museums are not only worth preserving but, even better, worth expanding. I write “could get”, because — although I very […]

There’s been quite a lot of noise about European university museums in the last couple of years. A lot of people are thinking about why and how the academic heritage should be collected, preserved and exhibited (to the right is one of the, our own Medical Museion in Copenhagen). Now the University of Tartu History Museum […]

Great initiative! Elena Corradini at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) and Marek Bukowski at the Museum of the Medical University of Gdansk (Poland) are proposing a European Anatomical Collections Network. Elena and Marek’s idea is to launch a joint European program for the preservation, handling, and availability of anatomical collection based on […]

I’ve been invited to give a keynote lecture at the 2011 University Museum Conference, which is going to be held 11-12 November at the National Cheng Kung University Museum in Tainan, Taiwan. Apparently, I’m supposed to speak my mind, so this would be a great opportunity to think through the topic of university museums. But what to […]

Next year’s Universeum meeting (the 13th) will take place 14-16 June 2012 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim. An announcement and call for papers will be sent out in November. See further: http://www.universeum.it/meetings.html. For those who have forgotten it: Universeum is an association for the preservation, study, access and promotion of […]

Many medical (history) museums are attached to universities, so if you’re interested in our kind of museums, you might want to attend the 11th annual conference of University Collections and Museums (UMAC) at the Museum of Science of the University of Lisbon, 21-25 September. See preliminary programme here.

We have just submitted an application for a major new gallery based on our anatomical and pathological specimen collections — and the in-house discussions are already becoming vigorous. How to find conceptually interesting ways to display cancer tumours, conjoined twins, and twisted torsos? What’s the balance between spectacular engagement and ethical concerns? How to make the historical collections […]

Has any readers of this blog seen Harvard University’s exhibit ‘Tangible Things’, which “brings together 200 objects from the back rooms and Z-closets of Harvard’s museums and libraries”? The idea behind the exhibit is the contemporary-traditional critical view of the ordering and categorisation of things: Questioning the modern Western intellectual categories that distinguish art from artifact, […]