Books
Sam Alberti dissects an accessible book on the ins and outs of displaying human remains
These are interesting times for medical museums. The Wellcome Collection continues to attract the Incurably Curious and the Science Museum plans the largest medical galleries in the world. The Anatomy Museum of the University of Aberdeen, however, will attract somewhat fewer visitors. In 2009 it vacated its neo-gothic gallery in Marischal College and moved with its academic department to the Suttie Centre for Teaching and Learning in Healthcare, where visitor access to the licensed space containing anatomical material is governed by the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006. Why, then, would anthropologist Elizabeth Hallam focus on this collection, from its Enlightenment inception to the fieldwork she undertook there in its final decade?
The answer lies not so much in that particular museum, but in the way Hallam uses it as a prism for a range of issues. In its heyday, roughly from 1860 to 1930, Aberdeen’s museum was one of dozens across the UK. Every anatomy school, Royal College and university medical faculty had a large collection of anatomy, pathology and/or zoology.
Keenly aware of the broader context and making liberal use of other collections in the UK, Hallam shows us how dynamic and diverse a successful collection like this was. The people she tells us about include not only anatomists, but also technicians, students and other visitors.
She guides us beyond the museum to other anatomy spaces, especially the lecture theatre and the dissection room (beware, those of weak stomach).
The material culture of anatomy was by no means limited to human remains; I lost count of the objects of her study after listing animals, artworks, blackboards, buildings, knitting, memorials, models, photographs, statuary and textbooks.
Hallam’s argument is that to understand the body (and more broadly, natural science collections), students and other visitors considered objects, models, images and texts together. Few of us widen our focus to consider this “intermediality”.
The rewards of this approach are especially evident in her chapter on the “living anatomy” taught in the mid-20th century by Robert Lockhart, professor of anatomy and honorary curator of Aberdeen’s Anatony Museum. To illustrate the anatomy of the head, for example, he used Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1939) and a 1954 cover of Woman’s Own, as well as a museum specimen. Lockhart brought movement and colour to the museum throughout his 26-year tenure as the anatomy chair; on his retirement, students scattered rhododendrons in the lecture theatre, nicely encapsulating the keen gardener’s approach to anatomy as a growing, living science.
It is arguable that the delight in the anatomists’ art that shines through these pages makes for a rather rosy view, given that we would now consider unethical many of the practices discussed. Hallam does not shy away from anatomy’s dark side, from the Alder Hey organ retention scandal to the colonial and racist overtones of the anthropological elements of the collection. But she does not let this overwhelm her appreciation of the poetics of display, and her concluding chapter explores, with touching sensitivity, the memorialisation of those who have donated their bodies for medical education in recent decades.
That change in tack is symptomatic of Hallam’s challenge throughout the book: how to weave these strands into a coherent narrative that will appeal not only to academic but also to professional or general readers.
Her overall structure is the chronology of the Aberdeen museum, but as she goes along she visits other sites and times to support her argument.
While this can befuddle the reader, the unexpected insights she brings are worth it. Anatomy Museum is well worth reading. It is impeccably researched, nicely produced and lavishly illustrated. It spurs us to think differently about collections of all kinds, and relationships between the things in them. From papier-mâché to plastic, from plastinates to plasticine, there is beauty to be found in the anatomy museum.
The original space once occupied by the Aberdeen collection now houses an independent, artist-led studio and production centre, called the Anatomy Rooms. Creativity and multimedia continue to thrive.
Sam Alberti is the keeper of science and technology at National Museums Scotland
The answer lies not so much in that particular museum, but in the way Hallam uses it as a prism for a range of issues. In its heyday, roughly from 1860 to 1930, Aberdeen’s museum was one of dozens across the UK. Every anatomy school, Royal College and university medical faculty had a large collection of anatomy, pathology and/or zoology.
Keenly aware of the broader context and making liberal use of other collections in the UK, Hallam shows us how dynamic and diverse a successful collection like this was. The people she tells us about include not only anatomists, but also technicians, students and other visitors.
She guides us beyond the museum to other anatomy spaces, especially the lecture theatre and the dissection room (beware, those of weak stomach).
The material culture of anatomy was by no means limited to human remains; I lost count of the objects of her study after listing animals, artworks, blackboards, buildings, knitting, memorials, models, photographs, statuary and textbooks.
Hallam’s argument is that to understand the body (and more broadly, natural science collections), students and other visitors considered objects, models, images and texts together. Few of us widen our focus to consider this “intermediality”.
The rewards of this approach are especially evident in her chapter on the “living anatomy” taught in the mid-20th century by Robert Lockhart, professor of anatomy and honorary curator of Aberdeen’s Anatony Museum. To illustrate the anatomy of the head, for example, he used Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1939) and a 1954 cover of Woman’s Own, as well as a museum specimen. Lockhart brought movement and colour to the museum throughout his 26-year tenure as the anatomy chair; on his retirement, students scattered rhododendrons in the lecture theatre, nicely encapsulating the keen gardener’s approach to anatomy as a growing, living science.
It is arguable that the delight in the anatomists’ art that shines through these pages makes for a rather rosy view, given that we would now consider unethical many of the practices discussed. Hallam does not shy away from anatomy’s dark side, from the Alder Hey organ retention scandal to the colonial and racist overtones of the anthropological elements of the collection. But she does not let this overwhelm her appreciation of the poetics of display, and her concluding chapter explores, with touching sensitivity, the memorialisation of those who have donated their bodies for medical education in recent decades.
That change in tack is symptomatic of Hallam’s challenge throughout the book: how to weave these strands into a coherent narrative that will appeal not only to academic but also to professional or general readers.
Her overall structure is the chronology of the Aberdeen museum, but as she goes along she visits other sites and times to support her argument.
While this can befuddle the reader, the unexpected insights she brings are worth it. Anatomy Museum is well worth reading. It is impeccably researched, nicely produced and lavishly illustrated. It spurs us to think differently about collections of all kinds, and relationships between the things in them. From papier-mâché to plastic, from plastinates to plasticine, there is beauty to be found in the anatomy museum.
The original space once occupied by the Aberdeen collection now houses an independent, artist-led studio and production centre, called the Anatomy Rooms. Creativity and multimedia continue to thrive.
Sam Alberti is the keeper of science and technology at National Museums Scotland