National Medical Museum

Photo: Gorm Gaare

The National Medical Museum is the country's central custodian of the tangible and intangible cultural heritage within the history of health and medicine. The museum aims to be a meeting place for different environments, understandings and experiences. It communicates historical and recent knowledge about health and medicine in an open, interdisciplinary and relevant way, and facilitates the development of new knowledge and reflection.

Dress made from face masks hanging on a tailor's bust

Photo: Håkon Bergseth

Mediation

The permanent exhibition Life and Death, which opened in 2021, is a very valuable addition to The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology 's outreach. In 2023, it was the museum's most popular exhibition in terms of school visits, with a total number of visitors of almost 10,000 students and teachers. The figures include tours of both this exhibition alone and in combination with other exhibitions. Life and Death receives a lot of good feedback from our visitors.

Special tours in 2023 included tours for young children during the Easter holidays. These focused on Mummy Maren, the mummified female body that is the central object in the Life and Death exhibition. A tour for kindergarten children called “Hurrah for the Children!” was developed, which uses the exhibition to discuss topics such as babies, IVF and Norway’s first incubator.

The section of Life and Death that deals with the coronavirus has been updated. The museum acquired an artwork called "For Service", which is a dress made from a face mask during the pandemic by artist Marit Amalie Røed. A new stand was built for the dress, while existing content was moved so that the dress now forms the core of the exhibition's "corona wall". During SENT in October, the new artwork was celebrated with an event called "After the pandemic". The event was a conversation with the audience where participants shared experiences from the lockdown.

In connection with the Research Days in September, the museum collaborated with the Faculty of Medicine at UiO to organize the Research Square at The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology . Faculty employees presented creative stalls and visual representations of topics: From the reactions of intestinal villi to celiac disease to the use of VR to examine people's memory. Almost 1,000 students visited the Research Square.

The first curator shows off a face mask from the Oslo emergency room. On the floor are open suitcases with various objects.

Photo: Håkon Bergseth

Collection work

The National Medical Museum has continued to register objects in the storage room at Gjerdrum. Special focus has been placed on objects from the National Hospital's eye department.

Registration of the medical book collection continued in 2023. Approximately 40 shelf meters (hm) of books have so far been entered into ASTA and are therefore searchable in Oria. Approximately 300 hm remain. They are mixed with journals, small print, archives and individual objects. Work has begun to separate the small print and register them in series in ASTA as part of the National Hospital's archives. This will constitute an estimated 30 of the remaining 300 hm, and will be very time-saving.

Bærum Hospital has been granted a loan of a model of the hospital made in the 1940s, which they will use in the celebration of their 100th anniversary in 2024. The National Medical Museum has also made three visits to the Oslo Emergency Department, which moved to Aker Hospital and therefore closed its doors at Storgata 40 on 22 November 2023. The museum identified around 15–20 objects that are considered to be of high historical value and will be included in the museum's collection. The museum's photographer documented the former Emergency Department by taking photos of the interior of the building and the employees who worked there on the last shift.

The National Medical Museum has created a paper archive of its own activities, including all exhibitions from 2002 to 2022, as well as some accessions and administrative documents. This material had been stored in ring binders and boxes for many years. It has now been organized, registered with ASTA, and stored in archival quality folders and boxes.

Photo: Håkon Bergseth

Research and networking

The research activities at the National Medical Museum are closely linked to the management and dissemination work. In recent years, it has also been linked to the project Museums' Knowledge Topography (2018-2023).

The museum's conservators in the field have published research articles, participated in conferences and given professional lectures. In 2023, a new chief conservator was hired with the history of health and medicine as his main area of work.

The National Medical Museum is responsible for the National Museum Network for the History of Health and Medicine (NMHM), which is one of the Directorate of Culture's museum networks. It consists of around 30 museums, many of which are institutional museums affiliated with hospitals. In June, the network held a two-day seminar. The hospital collections at Gaustad, Dikemark, Aker and Ullevål were the organizers, and the participants got to know all four locations better.

The National Medical Museum is also a member of the steering committee of the International Association of Medical Museums (IAMM), a professional group formerly known as the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS). In September 2023, the museum participated in the conference "New Horizons for Medical Museums and Collections" at the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave in Leiden, the Netherlands, which was a kick-off meeting for the IAMM.

In August, the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH) organized a four-day seminar in Oslo, where the theme was “Crisis.” The National Medical Museum participated and hosted a conference dinner and a tour of the museum’s exhibitions.

National Medical Museum