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- Convenors:
-
Tytti Steel
(University of Helsinki)
Suzie Thomas (University of Antwerp)
- Stream:
- Museums
- Location:
- A124
Short Abstract:
In this session we discuss the potential of museums to contribute to health and wellbeing, inviting both researchers and practitioners. Is this agenda an instrumentalization of the museum institution, as some have suggested, or is it a powerful positioning of the benefits of museums to society?
Long Abstract:
Are claims that museums contribute to general health and wellbeing realistic, or are they a utopian ideal? How can we measure these claims in a reliable way? Should museums even be considering health and wellbeing issues in their day to day work, or is this beyond the role and responsibility of the museum institution? We invite both researchers and practitioners to contribute both case studies and theoretical standpoints. Ultimately, we ask if focussing on the wellbeing potential of museums is creating unrealistic and inappropriate goals that follow agendas which are not in the interests of the museum, or whether positioning museums as contributors to wellbeing is in fact creating an important position for them in contemporary society?
Through this panel we aim also to create a networking opportunity. It is part of a recently started research project on museums and wellbeing at the University of Helsinki, involving the two panel convenors.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Tytti Steel (University of Helsinki) Suzie Thomas (University of Antwerp)
Paper short abstract:
In this presentation, we will deconstruct the concept of wellbeing in relation to museums and heritage. How is wellbeing understood in connection with museums? Could the concept be redefined for the benefit of museums and their visitors?
Paper long abstract:
In this presentation, we will explore the concept of wellbeing as a growing area of interest for both researchers and practitioners particularly in relation to museums and heritage. How is wellbeing understood in connection with museums? Could the concept be redefined for the benefit of museums and their visitors?
We will discuss a number of theoretical approaches and key case studies from museum and heritage studies. In particular, we will concentrate on the emotional wellbeing, the visitors' emotional engagement and potential connections to cultural identity.
One important aspect in the area is the connection of learning and wellbeing. Both experimental and scientific knowledge show that learning new things can be a pleasure. On the other hand, some authors have suggested that learning should not be framed as the most important aspect of museum experience. If this is the case, are there implications for the ways in which wellbeing initiatives are developed within museums?
This presentation is intended as the opening of the session in order to introduce the key themes and stimulate debate.
Cristiana Bastos (Universidade de Lisboa)
Paper short abstract:
In the context of discussing museums as healing devices, I review the strategies of display in a variety of health museums in Europe, analyse the uses of medical moulages, and illustrate with a contemporary exhibit of original moulages from an early 20th century syphilis clinic.
Paper long abstract:
If museums are meant to be healing in a variety of ways -- by improving the cognitive capacities of their visitors and restoring their attention skills, by strengthening the self-esteem of communities via the celebration of heritage, or by promoting the recovery from trauma via the expression of memory - there are collections literally related to health and healing. The questions are whether, how, to what extent and in which ways the exhibition of medical, pharmaceutical, nursing or public health collections fulfils a healing agenda. This paper addresses those questions by reviewing the past and contemporary trends on European health museums and by focusing on the uses of medical moulages. Anatomical wax models, at once an art form and a learning device, became most notorious in 18th century Tuscany, from where come the famous collections of La Specola (Florence), Poggi (Bologna) or the Josephinum (Vienna). In the 19th century, the technique reached another level of artistic realism when used for morbid anatomy, creating impressive collections of haunting models that exist up to our days in a number of European cities. Some of the most expressive moulages represent advanced stages of syphillis and other VDs in actual patients, their sight often causing discomfort and potentially used as negative model. In this paper I will review the strategies via which moulages are exhibited in different European museums and report the experience of a particularly haunting collection of moulages created on a syphilis clinic in Lisbon in the 1930s-40s.