{"id":8234,"date":"2022-12-22T08:36:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T08:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8234"},"modified":"2023-09-15T11:13:38","modified_gmt":"2023-09-15T11:13:38","slug":"still-wellcome-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2022\/12\/22\/still-wellcome-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Wellcome here?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I used to go to meetings at the Institute of Education in London, I developed the habit of dropping by the Wellcome Trust's coffee and book shop on the Euston Road. \u00a0It was and remains a good place to meet and eat. \u00a0I've been to a few of their exhibitions as well, most memorably to the Charles Foster curated<\/a> event on humans and animals back in 2016. \u00a0I've walked round their Medicine Man<\/em> collection a few times as well and gazed at the eclectic compilation of artefacts compiled by Sir Henry Wellcome.<\/p>\n

That exhibition has now been shut to great fanfare and ridicule<\/a>. \u00a0In a letter to The Times, Sir Jeremy Farrar, Wellcome\u00a0Director, and\u00a0Julia Gillard, its\u00a0Chair, say:<\/p>\n

\"With much more material than we can exhibit, every curatorial decision is a choice not to tell another story. \u00a0When Medicine Man opened in 2007, we chose to focus on the collector. \u00a0This was also a choice not to focus on the people, often marginalised and excluded, who made and used the objects collected. \u00a0We no longer consider this the right choice. \u00a0Henry Wellcome\u2019s vision, of advancing health through science and culture, remains central to Wellcome\u2019s work. \u00a0It means exploring broader experiences of health than those in Medicine Man. \u00a0We continue to do this through objects from our founders\u2019 collection, set in their full human context.\"<\/p>\n

Fair enough you might think. \u00a0A 15 year old exhibition might well be overdue for a rethink. \u00a0Bur Farrar and Gillard have only had to write to The Times because their colleagues at Wellcome made such a terrible bodge of communicating their intentions about changes to the exhibition.<\/p>\n

In the language activists curators prefer these days, Medicine Man<\/em> was condemned by the Wellcome Collection's social media output as \"racist, sexist and ableist\u201d. \u00a0Announcing the closure on Twitter (where else?) they said:\u00a0\u201cWhat\u2019s the point of museums? Truthfully, we\u2019re asking ourselves the same question.\"<\/p>\n

The Collection, it said:\u00a0\"told a global story of health and medicine in which disabled people, Black people, Indigenous peoples and people of colour were exoticised, marginalised and exploited \u2014 or even missed out altogether. \u00a0We can\u2019t change our past. But we can work towards a future where we give voice to the narratives and lived experiences of those who have been silenced, erased and ignored.\"<\/p>\n

Breathless stuff! \u00a0 Let's hope they've not buggered about with the coffee.<\/p>\n

There is a more rational explanation<\/a> on the Collection's website, but don't tell the activists as the poor things will only have an attack of the vapours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I used to go to meetings at the Institute of Education in London, I developed the habit of dropping by the Wellcome Trust's coffee and book shop on the Euston Road. \u00a0It was and remains a good place to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}