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26 | ENGAGING SCIENCE
Happy anniversary
Cut and thrust
Wellcome Collection attracted more than
300 000 visits in its first year of opening.
Neurosurgery and the sinking of the
Mary Rose have been the focus of two
acclaimed documentaries.
1 2
Wellcome Collection, opened in June
2007, offers visitors a unique chance
to explore different cultural fields
inspired by science, and to debate
and discuss wider social issues. An
eventful year saw innovative
exhibitions on sleeping and
crystallography-inspired design, as
well as a deeply moving photographic
exhibition of terminally ill people. The
visitor numbers far exceeded
expectations and, combined with a
string of plaudits from critics,
amounted to a highly successful first
year of operations.
The first new temporary exhibition of the
year, Sleeping & Dreaming, a partnership
with the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum,
Dresden, brought together works from
artists, scientists, film makers and
historians, illuminating a ubiquitous but
mysterious aspect of human behaviour.
Life Before Death, a series of 24 sets of
photographs taken of terminally ill people
before and after their deaths, resulted
from a collaboration between journalist
Beate Lakotta and photographer Walter
Schels. Featured on the Guardian
website, it broke the newspaper’s record
for the highest number of hits in a
24-hour period.
By complete contrast, From Atoms to
Patterns included ‘insulin wallpaper’ and
other intriguing designs from the 1951
Festival of Britain, all inspired by X-ray
crystallography. The final exhibition of the
year, Skeletons: London’s buried bones,
featured 26 skeletons from the Museum
of London’s Centre for Human
Bioarchaeology, collectively uncovering
2000 years of London’s history.
The temporary exhibitions were
complemented by a lively events
programme, which included debates
about organ donation, obesity and
genetic tests, performances of a play
exploring chronic fatigue syndrome and
a festival to launch The Big Draw 2008.
The exhibitions and events met with
wide-reaching critical attention from
national and international media. As a
contributor to the Rough Guide website
put it: “Wellcome Collection is a small,
eclectic, imaginative, humane, humorous
exhibition of objects related, sometimes
in the loosest sense, to medicine. It is
WONDERFUL.”
Wellcome Collection was also one of
only four venues shortlisted for this year’s
prestigious Art Fund Prize, a national
award given to a public venue whose
project demonstrates the most
originality, imagination and excellence.
They are two compelling stories. The
English Surgeon documents the
attempts of a leading brain surgeon
struggling to save lives in Ukraine. In
complete contrast, The Ghosts of the
Mary Rose: Revealed describes how
forensic analysis of sailors’ remains
may explain the dramatic sinking of
the Mary Rose in 1545.
Henry Marsh first visited Kiev in 1992,
and was horrified by the conditions
endured by both patients and doctors.
Since then he has made at least two trips
a year – taking time off as a consultant at
St George’s Hospital – to work with
Ukrainian neurosurgeon Igor Petrovich.
The English Surgeon, funded by a
Wellcome Trust People Award, was
produced by Geoffrey Smith and
screened on BBC2 in April 2008 to
critical acclaim. Time Out called it “a
life-affirming, unforgettable portrait of a
true humanitarian”, and the Guardian
described it as “a lovely, lovely film”. It
won Best International Feature
Documentary at HotDocs 2008.
Shot over two chaotic weeks in the 2007
Ukrainian winter, the film shows Marsh
agonising over whom he can and cannot
save – and struggling with local logistical
and political constraints. At one point he
has to use a £30 cordless drill to bore
into a patient’s skull. Remarkably, the
operation is a success.
Images
1 T h e Life Before Death exhibition.
2 T h e From Atoms to Patterns exhibition.
3 Hugh Montgomery, examining the remains of a Mary Rose sailor.
4 Professor John Holman, Director of the
National Science Learning Centre.
5 A practical demonstration at the launch
of Project Enthuse.