Previous exhibitions

The exhibition is created by Inger Emilie Nitter and consists of 12 works, paintings and embroidery on fabric, produced in the period 1998-2002.

Nitter has previously been admitted to Blakstad psychiatric hospital. Fanene comments on her encounters with Norwegian mental health care. “I woke up and understood that something was fundamentally wrong with the system. One thing was clear to me, I wanted to give psychiatry a new basic view: Humans are properly built when they experience psychological reactions.”

The photo exhibition "This is Parkinson's", a project that challenges our ideas about Parkinson's disease, was created by photographer and journalist Anders M. Leines and physician Sonja Fossum. The project was shown at The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology / National Medical Museum in 2015.

The Norwegian story of 200 years of democracy and national unity is also a story of powerlessness and loneliness. In the great story about us, about Norway and the Norwegian, there are many who fall outside.

Alongside the stories of freedom and inclusion, there are also stories of stigmatization, exclusion and invisibility, past and present. The exhibition conveyed fragments of these stories. Among other things, stories about the Norwegianization of Sami culture, about educational institutions, racial biology, the body, tuberculosis, undocumented status, developmental disabilities and drug addiction. The exhibition also gave us an insight into the everyday lives of young people with drug addiction through their own pictures.

Exhibition period: September 17, 2014 – (closed).

Produced by Walter Schels and Beate Lakotta. 

The exhibition LIFE BEFORE DEATH showed 26 portraits of death and explored the experiences, hopes and fears of the dying. 

Few experiences touch us more strongly than encounters with death. Yet death is rarely visible in everyday life. It is private and hidden. Death and the dying are undoubtedly among our last taboos – a topic we find problematic. IN LIFE BEFORE DEATH, photographer Walter Schels and journalist Beate Lakotta followed terminally ill people through their last weeks and days.

Exhibition period: March 4, 2017–August 25, 2017

About one in seven heterosexual couples have problems getting pregnant. In addition, there are those who live in gay or lesbian relationships, or are single, who also have a strong desire for children. But the internet opens up new opportunities for involuntarily childless people. In this exhibition, the National Medical Museum focused on the "state of the art" of the possibilities via the internet.

Exhibition period: September 19 to November 4, 2007

Health center for undocumented migrants

There are between 10,000 and 20,000 people living in Norway without legal residence. They have different stories and different reasons for staying. They live in a kind of nowhere land.

The health center for undocumented migrants was established in 2009 and treats between 500 and 1,000 people a year.

The National Medical Museum worked in 2012 to find out more about the center – about the people, the thinking and the things that make up and create it. Through a series of photographs, interviews and objects, the exhibition sought to convey and discuss an understanding of what the health center does, how and why.

A documentary exhibition about the practical handling of death within various institutional settings, from nursing homes and hospitals to funeral homes, churches and crematoriums.

Through a series of images by photographer Håkon Bergseth, the exhibition provides insight into different types of care, procedures, routines and preparations carried out in connection with deaths in today's Norway.

The exhibition shows photographs of and short interviews with tuberculosis patients around the world, a 12-minute documentary from a sanatorium in Arkhangelsk, and drawings made by children with tuberculosis at a sanatorium in Russia.

The exhibition is produced by the Norwegian Heart and Lung Association (LHL).

The Norwegian Council of Technology and the National Medical Museum put "old age in 2020" on the agenda with the exhibition Ready for the elderly wave? The exhibition reflected on what demands, wishes and needs the elderly of the future will have and what challenges society will face in the future.

The exhibition was based on the research project Beauty comes from within .

About the project, written by Ingun Grimstad Klepp, Gun Roos and Mari Rysst / SIFO:

There is a strong norm that one should not judge people by their appearance. At the same time, the focus on how the body should look is increasing. The market for products and services that argue for increased health, well-being and beauty has exploded. There is much evidence that the importance of appearance as a motivational factor for physical activity, diets and the like, and for the way we understand ourselves and judge each other, is increasing. In order to achieve targeted health information, it is therefore important to clarify the relationship between health and appearance.

This is the background for the Nordic project “Beauty comes from within: looking good as a challenge in health promotion”, which is being completed these days and from which the exhibition “Beauty and Health” stems.

The project has two modules with the following sub-areas:

1. Beauty and Health (Beautiful Youth, Sex and Beauty, Paths to Beauty)

2. The judgmental gaze (Dressed for training, The body as object and subject, The experience of the gaze of others).

The aggressive epidemics had a severe impact on the population in Norway and in Agder during the period 1820-1920. Children and adults died without being able to explain why or how the diseases spread.

Most doctors did not believe in infection, instead their opinion was that this was about bad air and poor sanitary conditions.

But in Agder, there was a rebellion. The theories did not match what was seen. In opposition to the medical elite in the capital, they therefore established a quarantine station on Odderøya. There was conflict...

Fever and Community - the Century of Epidemics 1820-1920 is produced by the Vest-Agder Museum in collaboration with the University of Agder, Agder Nature Museum and the National Medical Museum/ The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology .

In Norway, around 10,000 people live without legal residence. They live in hiding – undocumented and without rights. How are they doing? The photo exhibition In My Shoes takes a closer look at the situation of undocumented people in Norway.

Produced in collaboration with Norwegian People's Aid.

The things that tell the history of psychiatry in Norway are decaying and disappearing. What could have given us knowledge about the many people who have lived, worked, suffered, given or received help and treatment within psychiatry, becomes scrap that should be thrown away. To the same extent that the history of psychiatry is poorly preserved, the interest in it, and the conviction that it is important and necessary, is great.

How should Norwegian psychiatric history be preserved and told? How should the sources of knowledge be selected? Who should decide what the important stories are?

Based on Lier Hospital, this exhibition unearths some of the stories and voices found in the history of psychiatric institutions.