One day, employees at the National Medical Museum opened a cabinet in a warehouse - there was a skeleton hanging on a peg. In another warehouse was a cardboard box with the following written in marker: "Fetal remains in alcohol - flammable!" Now the museum is taking the skeletons out of the cabinet and asking what is right to do with them. Are skeletons things? Do they have rights?
New insights
Based on the collection of human remains at the National Medical Museum/ The Norwegian Museum Of Science And Technology , we want to open up a broad discussion about how this material can best be handled; that is, managed, researched and communicated. What new questions, perspectives and understandings can the collection lead us to? With the exhibition, we want to showcase preliminary findings and insights in the project, and at the same time facilitate the inclusion of an important and so far missing entity in the discussion: the public.
Background to the project
A central starting point for the establishment of the National Medical Museum was the collection of objects from the National Hospital/University of Oslo, which was transferred to NTM in connection with the National Hospital moving from Oslo City Center to Gaustad. The collection is diverse, and includes, among other things, a collection of human biological material. There are approximately 200 objects; alcohol preparations - mostly of human organs (brains, hearts, lungs), as well as various tissue preparations (skin), also some embryos - and skeletal preparations (fetuses, hands, feet, skulls, loose bones). The collection has been quite disorganized. A source of bad conscience, but also of new knowledge within a number of disciplines and subject areas.
A subcollection where we can find out much more is 11 preparations used in the Maternity Home Exhibition in 1916. The fact that the objects were included in an exhibition 100 years ago is an interesting starting point: How were they collected, and how were they exhibited? What themes were they intended to illustrate, what questions were they intended to answer? What can they tell us about changes in exhibition practices and in how fetuses are used in museums? At the time, the overall goal was clear: To raise the status of motherhood and contribute to the construction of maternity homes, but what are we going to do with them today?
Track both forward and backward
We believe that our collection of human remains contains important, unexplored sources. There are potential traces back and forth - to various research projects, to individual fates and special practices. Within, for example, the history of science, museology, psychiatry and somatic medicine. The job now is to find good ways to talk about and use this material.
The project is one of six projects in the methodology development project The Method of Things, and has received support from the Arts Council of Norway. It started in 2016 and ended in the fall of 2017. The exhibition Skeletons in the Closet will remain empty until April 29, 2018.
