Söderqvist, Thomas (Author)
NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin
Volume: 18
Pages: 69--78
As director of Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen I have chosen to focus our efforts---our research, our acquisitioning activities, and our public outreach---precisely on late twentieth century and contemporary medical science and medical technology, and I have come to rather different conclusions than Sichau. All museum people are familiar with the problems that Sichau is confronting, and I can easily understand why he expresses such defeatist views. I too believe that the acquisitioning and keeping of contemporary science instruments and artefacts is a very demanding task for museums, especially university museums. The current cultural and political climate places university museums uncomfortably between, on the one hand, a museum logic that favors the creation of spectacular public shows and events and, on the other hand, the prevailing logic of university departments, which is to publish as many often-cited scholarly papers in high-ranked journals as possible. Today's university museum is placed somewhere between these two entrenched logics. This borderline position is problematic, because curating scientific instruments, technological devices, and medical artefacts does not necessarily lead either to popular blockbuster shows or to a steady flow of articles in high-impact journals. Acquiring and curating material artefact, image, and document collections all too easily becomes a neither-nor; an unspectacular and invisible activity resulting in insignificant publications in low-ranked journals.
...MoreDescription On the Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen.
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