Our brain and bowels are under examination in the exhibition Mind the Gut. Through a thought-provoking blend of science, art and history, the exhibition explores the complex connections between our mind and our guts. Brain, gut feelings, identity, bowels, bacteria, microbiomes – all interlinked.

Mind the Gut shows, how doctors researchers, patients and artists have tried to understand and treat the complex relation between mind and gut throughout time. An enigma, which have occupied us through millennia and still does through scientific experiments, trendy lifestyle tendencies and fierce debates about health.

Here, we have gathered blogposts about the exhibition

Poster image from ‘The Swallow and the Squeeze’, produced for Mind the Gut and directed by Guston Sondin-Kung, with costume design by Mira Vinzents and director of Photography Daniel Zox.

Medical Museion is a university museum and part of the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen. Mind the gut came into being in a collaboration between three artists, two researchers, an architect, a graphic designer and our group of curators. The exhibition is made by Medical Museion and the Section for Science Communication at The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research.

Project group at Medical Museion
Adam Bencard, Curator, Nanna Gerdes, Conservator, Niels Christian Vilstrup-Møller, Curator, Louise Whiteley, Curator, Malthe Kouassi Bjerregaard, Curator, Caroline Thon, Research assistant.

Co-curator group
Naja Ryde Ankarfeldt, Marie Balslev Backe, Christian Bache Billesbølle, Mogens Jacobsen, Guston Sondin-Kung

UMAC Award 2019
In 2019, Medical Museion won one of the most prestigious awards in the museum world, the UMAC Award, for Mind the Gut. The award was given at a ceremony in Kyoto, Japan, on september 3rd 2019 in connection with the annual meeting of ICOM. The other nominees were Art Museum in Toronto, Canada, which were nominated for the project Figures of Sleep and Shanghai University, which were nominated for the exchange program SHU-NIU Museology Internship Program.

Bikubenfondens Exhibition Award 2015
The exhibition won the Vision Exhibition Award from Bikubenfonden in 2015. Below, you can see a movie about the project

Contact curators Adam Bencard or Louise Whiteley.
adab@sund.ku.dk, phone +45 27 51 15 53
louise.whiteley@sund.ku.dk, phone +45 21 12 67 12