Henry Wellcome, the 19th century American pharmacist, marketed his first 'medicinal' product at 16. It was an invisible ink, reportedly made from lemon juice. How successful he was in his first venture is not known. But it's not about the money; it's the idea that matters.
Ideas, says Ken Arnold, the head of public programmes at the Wellcome Trust, are the lifeblood of the trust. And he believes that the founder's entrepreneurial spirit has become the attitude that staff at the Wellcome live by.
How different it is from his local authority experiences (at Croydon Central Library in 1990, and the Livesey Museum, 1991-92, in south-east London) and under the roof of a national museum (Museum of Mankind, 1989-90) where ideas meant something but were not seen as something to act on immediately.
'I had a strong sense in which ideas did count but you had to stick around a hell of a long time before you could prove that they were worth flying with,' Arnold says. 'Cynically I always ended up with the sense that if you had an idea you should put it in your drawer, work on climbing ladders for the next ten years and then open your drawer up. The sadness was that by then it had shrivelled up and died or five other people had done it just as well as you could.'
And he adds: 'We live and die by ideas at the trust. We are funding the best ideas in science, how to engage the public. I was encouraged to come up with ideas.'
And there lies the fundamental advantage that a staff member of the independent and monied Wellcome has over publicly funded museums. 'In a much less well-endowed organisation, the challenge of wasting a thousand pounds is cataclysmic.'
Which is a very good reason for Arnold spending the past 15 years - and most of his working life - at the trust. During that period he has worked in various guises but this is perhaps his proudest moment - the opening last month of a £30m public venue and the redisplaying of the Wellcome Collection 'to look at what connects medicine, life and art'.
Heading a department of 15 it has been a collaborative effort, but Arnold says that 'looking over my shoulder I can see I have been working up to this point over the past 15 years'.
Arnold has invited me for a sneak preview of the space and the collections that are almost ready in early June when I visit. There are two permanent galleries (Medicine Man and Medicine Now) one temporary space, a library, a cafe, and a Blackwells bookshop in the 1930s building at 183 Euston Road.
He introduces me to a whale's heart - the size of a small dog - along with a number of other hearts comparing beats with a human's own. It is part of the venue's first temporary exhibition, The Heart, curated by James Peto and Emily Jo Sargent.
The show is using contemporary and historic artefacts from around the world to trace the history of our medical understanding of the heart and its cultural significance.
When Arnold arrived in 1992, he ran the History of Medicine gallery while drawing on the Wellcome Library collection to broaden public interest. Alongside this he ran the Two Ten Gallery on the opposite side of Euston Road where contemporary shows were held - curating exhibitions on the comparisons between Aids and syphilis, another on death.
What they all had in common he says is that the narrative ended with the present day and each one drew in work by contemporary artists.
This was the first time the Wellcome had juxtaposed contemporary science and medicine with contemporary art. And it heralded a new way of thinking about the accessibility of the subject. On the back of that Arnold set up the Sciart initiative, which he calls 'curation of a different sort'.
It was about curating people and interests - funding contemporary artists to engage the public - involving sometimes one scientist and one artist but sometimes groups of each.
Of course as an experiment, though mostly successful, there were some mistakes too. Arnold says that having funded more than 100 Sciart projects there was always going to be the likelihood of getting some wrong. Thinking that all scientific ideas needed dressing up in art was wrong. 'You never want an audience to leave an exhibition and think "so what",' he says.
When the History of Medicine gallery closed in 1998 (because of competition for the space) Arnold, along with external colleagues like Tim Boon, the head of collections at the Science Museum, came up with a way of bringing out the best in the Wellcome Collection. So history was added to the science and art partnership - creating four thematic exhibitions at the Science Museum.
There were also collaborations with the Victoria and Albert Museum and notably with the British Museum on Medicine Man in 2003 for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Wellcome. The show became the precursor to one of the two main galleries at the new Wellcome venue. Arnold says its 'crucial' to work with others and exchange ideas.
But he says it is not enough to simply engage the public through the exhibitions. 'One thing I've held onto throughout my working life is that I don't want to be associated with any project that doesn't stand on its own two feet. Of course we're doing it to engage the public but for me that's not enough.
The projects have to have quality in and of themselves. Evaluating them isn't quite enough for me either. I get out of bed with my own interests in mind. I want to balance feeling good because I want to do good things with engaging other people and being effective in doing that.'
Arnold says he feels that he is slightly in a player-manager role in the department he runs. Though his mark is on many of the displays and he co-curated the permanent Medicine Man gallery, he has to acknowledge that it is his team who mostly ran with the ideas.
'Most of the time I remember that they are the people doing and I should shut up and let them get on with it. They can all tell you about instances when I have not behaved myself.'
And it is with some lament that he says when the doors open to the collection then he will need to take an even further back seat.
But he will still be collaborating on exhibitions, such as the forthcoming show about sleeping and dreaming and another on war and medicine with the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden. He is also working on an event on science and faith with the British Library to hook around the library's Sacred exhibition.
Arnold's presence over the past 15 years has had an impact on the public face of Wellcome. The biggest change is 'how unashamed we are at being part of a cultural scene. For a long time it seemed as though science was removed from culture. The flow of ideas, information, excitement and spirit from one to the other is much more freely available'.
Arnold says the collection and the library have always been part of the world of culture but when he joined the organisation many would not have wanted it to be seen as a cultural space. But now things are different.
'We are unabashedly opening a cultural venue in a month's time,' he affirms. 'I hope that some of my work has encouraged the Wellcome Trust to not be scared by the idea that doing something cultural would cut it off from the public.' And he points to Tate Modern as a success story in being serious, real and undiluted but broadly accessible.
But there is still an inevitable tension that the core business of the trust is not about public activities. 'We are an organisation that does a very significant thing in the public domain but on the back of even more significant things in the world of science.'
Arnold has reinvented his role at least three times at the Wellcome Trust. 'Every time I've come to the end of a big project I've thought to myself surely now's the time to go out there and find something new to do.' But the temptation is always overtaken by something more interesting at the trust, he says.
When he thought he had played his strongest cards with the Science Museum and British Museum collaborations and running the Wellcome galleries, the redevelopment came along. 'I am driven by curiosity and wonder and the Wellcome Trust has a lot to offer the world in this.'
Opening the Wellcome Collection means the trust can begin to reach out further to the public and Arnold says there is room to think about its education mission and particularly a tie-in with formal schools education.
So, a redefinition of his role seems more likely than a move to pastures new. Just shy of his 47th birthday it may be that Arnold settles at the Wellcome Trust while doing various exhibitions in other museums and galleries.
He says he would like to curate again but not necessarily at Wellcome - the Tate is one he has his eye on. He would like to follow up on the teaching he does on science and wants to write more books.
'It's too exciting to have a new-minted institution that I have had a lot of involvement christening. I think I need to see this one through for a while.' So it's not just about the ideas is it.
Ideas, says Ken Arnold, the head of public programmes at the Wellcome Trust, are the lifeblood of the trust. And he believes that the founder's entrepreneurial spirit has become the attitude that staff at the Wellcome live by.
How different it is from his local authority experiences (at Croydon Central Library in 1990, and the Livesey Museum, 1991-92, in south-east London) and under the roof of a national museum (Museum of Mankind, 1989-90) where ideas meant something but were not seen as something to act on immediately.
'I had a strong sense in which ideas did count but you had to stick around a hell of a long time before you could prove that they were worth flying with,' Arnold says. 'Cynically I always ended up with the sense that if you had an idea you should put it in your drawer, work on climbing ladders for the next ten years and then open your drawer up. The sadness was that by then it had shrivelled up and died or five other people had done it just as well as you could.'
And he adds: 'We live and die by ideas at the trust. We are funding the best ideas in science, how to engage the public. I was encouraged to come up with ideas.'
And there lies the fundamental advantage that a staff member of the independent and monied Wellcome has over publicly funded museums. 'In a much less well-endowed organisation, the challenge of wasting a thousand pounds is cataclysmic.'
Which is a very good reason for Arnold spending the past 15 years - and most of his working life - at the trust. During that period he has worked in various guises but this is perhaps his proudest moment - the opening last month of a £30m public venue and the redisplaying of the Wellcome Collection 'to look at what connects medicine, life and art'.
Heading a department of 15 it has been a collaborative effort, but Arnold says that 'looking over my shoulder I can see I have been working up to this point over the past 15 years'.
Arnold has invited me for a sneak preview of the space and the collections that are almost ready in early June when I visit. There are two permanent galleries (Medicine Man and Medicine Now) one temporary space, a library, a cafe, and a Blackwells bookshop in the 1930s building at 183 Euston Road.
He introduces me to a whale's heart - the size of a small dog - along with a number of other hearts comparing beats with a human's own. It is part of the venue's first temporary exhibition, The Heart, curated by James Peto and Emily Jo Sargent.
The show is using contemporary and historic artefacts from around the world to trace the history of our medical understanding of the heart and its cultural significance.
When Arnold arrived in 1992, he ran the History of Medicine gallery while drawing on the Wellcome Library collection to broaden public interest. Alongside this he ran the Two Ten Gallery on the opposite side of Euston Road where contemporary shows were held - curating exhibitions on the comparisons between Aids and syphilis, another on death.
What they all had in common he says is that the narrative ended with the present day and each one drew in work by contemporary artists.
This was the first time the Wellcome had juxtaposed contemporary science and medicine with contemporary art. And it heralded a new way of thinking about the accessibility of the subject. On the back of that Arnold set up the Sciart initiative, which he calls 'curation of a different sort'.
It was about curating people and interests - funding contemporary artists to engage the public - involving sometimes one scientist and one artist but sometimes groups of each.
Of course as an experiment, though mostly successful, there were some mistakes too. Arnold says that having funded more than 100 Sciart projects there was always going to be the likelihood of getting some wrong. Thinking that all scientific ideas needed dressing up in art was wrong. 'You never want an audience to leave an exhibition and think "so what",' he says.
When the History of Medicine gallery closed in 1998 (because of competition for the space) Arnold, along with external colleagues like Tim Boon, the head of collections at the Science Museum, came up with a way of bringing out the best in the Wellcome Collection. So history was added to the science and art partnership - creating four thematic exhibitions at the Science Museum.
There were also collaborations with the Victoria and Albert Museum and notably with the British Museum on Medicine Man in 2003 for the 150th anniversary of the birth of Wellcome. The show became the precursor to one of the two main galleries at the new Wellcome venue. Arnold says its 'crucial' to work with others and exchange ideas.
But he says it is not enough to simply engage the public through the exhibitions. 'One thing I've held onto throughout my working life is that I don't want to be associated with any project that doesn't stand on its own two feet. Of course we're doing it to engage the public but for me that's not enough.
The projects have to have quality in and of themselves. Evaluating them isn't quite enough for me either. I get out of bed with my own interests in mind. I want to balance feeling good because I want to do good things with engaging other people and being effective in doing that.'
Arnold says he feels that he is slightly in a player-manager role in the department he runs. Though his mark is on many of the displays and he co-curated the permanent Medicine Man gallery, he has to acknowledge that it is his team who mostly ran with the ideas.
'Most of the time I remember that they are the people doing and I should shut up and let them get on with it. They can all tell you about instances when I have not behaved myself.'
And it is with some lament that he says when the doors open to the collection then he will need to take an even further back seat.
But he will still be collaborating on exhibitions, such as the forthcoming show about sleeping and dreaming and another on war and medicine with the Deutsches Hygiene Museum in Dresden. He is also working on an event on science and faith with the British Library to hook around the library's Sacred exhibition.
Arnold's presence over the past 15 years has had an impact on the public face of Wellcome. The biggest change is 'how unashamed we are at being part of a cultural scene. For a long time it seemed as though science was removed from culture. The flow of ideas, information, excitement and spirit from one to the other is much more freely available'.
Arnold says the collection and the library have always been part of the world of culture but when he joined the organisation many would not have wanted it to be seen as a cultural space. But now things are different.
'We are unabashedly opening a cultural venue in a month's time,' he affirms. 'I hope that some of my work has encouraged the Wellcome Trust to not be scared by the idea that doing something cultural would cut it off from the public.' And he points to Tate Modern as a success story in being serious, real and undiluted but broadly accessible.
But there is still an inevitable tension that the core business of the trust is not about public activities. 'We are an organisation that does a very significant thing in the public domain but on the back of even more significant things in the world of science.'
Arnold has reinvented his role at least three times at the Wellcome Trust. 'Every time I've come to the end of a big project I've thought to myself surely now's the time to go out there and find something new to do.' But the temptation is always overtaken by something more interesting at the trust, he says.
When he thought he had played his strongest cards with the Science Museum and British Museum collaborations and running the Wellcome galleries, the redevelopment came along. 'I am driven by curiosity and wonder and the Wellcome Trust has a lot to offer the world in this.'
Opening the Wellcome Collection means the trust can begin to reach out further to the public and Arnold says there is room to think about its education mission and particularly a tie-in with formal schools education.
So, a redefinition of his role seems more likely than a move to pastures new. Just shy of his 47th birthday it may be that Arnold settles at the Wellcome Trust while doing various exhibitions in other museums and galleries.
He says he would like to curate again but not necessarily at Wellcome - the Tate is one he has his eye on. He would like to follow up on the teaching he does on science and wants to write more books.
'It's too exciting to have a new-minted institution that I have had a lot of involvement christening. I think I need to see this one through for a while.' So it's not just about the ideas is it.
