The history of medical museums is one of Sam Alberti’s passions, so he’s enjoying planning events to mark the bicentenary of the Hunterian Museum.
The Hunterian is part of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Alberti became the organisation’s director of museums and archives in 2010, moving from a joint post he held at Manchester Museum and the Centre for Museology.
His current role also gives him responsibility for the college’s Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, which shares a site with the Hunterian in London’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields, across the square from Sir John Soane’s Museum.
The Hunterian opened its doors to the public on 18 May 1813 and one of the key events to celebrate its bicentenary is an exhibition opening this May. Alberti has been looking through the archive for material that will give a flavour of the museum’s fascinating history.
The Hunterian has its roots in the collection of human and animal remains gathered by the 18th-century surgeon John Hunter.
It is one of those museums sometimes described as a hidden gem although with 75,000 visitors a year it is hardly unknown.
But it has intriguing sounding temporary exhibitions, with titles such as Medicine at the Movies; Sci-Fi Surgery; and Churchill’s Dentures. There is lots of interesting history attached to the museum for Alberti to get his teeth into when developing the bicentenary programme.
Hunter was one of the founders of scientific surgery and influenced medical education, dentistry, pathology and veterinary science. He was fascinated by the physiology of animals, which is why there is so much natural history in the collection, and he kept an exotic menagerie at his Earl’s Court estate that included ostriches and leopards.
The Hunterian Museum itself has gone through many changes, including being hit by two incendiary bombs during world war two when 10,000 of Hunter’s original specimens were lost forever.
Many items have been added to the collection over the years, including the work of surgeon and artist Henry Tonks, whose pastel portraits document the procedures used by plastic surgeon Harold Gillies to reconstruct the faces of badly injured world war one soldiers.
Alberti wrote a history of 19th-century medical museums, Morbid Curiosities, while in Manchester so his move to the Hunterian, where he replaced Simon Chaplin, made sense in many ways.
“This job came along in the same month that I submitted the manuscript for the medical museums book,” says Alberti, who had worked closely with Chaplin in the past. “Even though I’d talked with Simon for years about how difficult having a real museum job was, it did seem too good not to have a go.”
There must have been strong pull factors, as Alberti says his combined role at Manchester Museum and the Centre for Museology was in many ways his dream job.
As a research fellow at the museum he could study the history of the museum, while he also enjoyed teaching museum studies at the Centre for Museology.
“Teaching hospital model”
“That job worked really nicely for me as the teaching informed the practice, which informed the teaching,” he says.
“Whatever you feel about museum studies as an enterprise, and there are justified criticisms that could be levelled at courses for churning out hundreds of over-qualified, expectant master’s students, if it is done, it should be done by people who are doing both at the same time, a sort of teaching hospital model.”
He also had a role in policy, looking at issues such as the display of human remains, which is relevant to the collections held by the Manchester Museum and the Hunterian. He also enjoyed developing exhibitions at the museum.
“I got to be involved in some interesting ones,” says Alberti, who points to Revealing Histories: Myths About Race, an exhibition about racism that he worked on with museum consultant Bernadette Lynch.
“For the most part it was a bit of a failure, but it was a very interesting process to be part of. Natural history and the mixture of nature and culture was really interesting intellectually.”
Alberti’s role as the museum’s resident historian led to the publication of Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum. This focuses on the history of one institution, but also contributes to wider discussions on science, culture and museology.
Nature and Culture was published shortly before his book on 19th-century medical museums and both were reviewed in this magazine. If his in-depth knowledge of the history of museums, particularly medical ones, made him a good fit for the Hunterian job, in other ways he was a less obvious choice.
Not only had he never been the head of a museum before, he also had no experience as a line manager of staff.
Surgical education
Alberti admits it was a risk. “Fortunately, the team here is very, very good. They are very professional, and they knew what they were doing so while I learned the ropes they were getting on with it.”
Alberti also says that Chaplin and interim director Briony Hudson had left the museum in good shape. It enjoys stable funding from the college and a few years before he joined, the museum had been transformed by a £3.1m redevelopment.
The project was shortlisted for the 2007 Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries.
With no major capital scheme to worry about, Alberti is focusing on three main areas: continuing the public engagement programme, which is largely done through the Hunterian Museum; growing the teaching side at the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology; and developing the research potential across the collections as a whole.
He is also keen to improve the library and archives offer. Increasing public engagement should be helped by the bicentenary year. Not only is there the exhibition, the college is offering a Hunterian bicentenary fellowship to allow someone to study the collection.
And there will be a bicentenary book that will include contributions written by medical museums throughout the world. However, the aim is not just to look back – Alberti also wants to highlight the role that the museum plays in surgical education today.
A higher profile should encourage more people to study at the Wellcome Museum and to use the collections for research. Alberti knows that things won’t change overnight, but he says studying museum history has taught him to look beyond yearly cycles.
He says that working on the history and development of museums gives a long-term perspective, and an ability to resist kneejerk reactions.
“In terms of our Wellcome Museum it is baby steps – a small grant here to do the lights, working with a particular course there – but it is looking at it in decades rather than months.”
The bicentenary year is also giving Alberti the chance to think about how the Hunterian has evolved, including those who have had his role in the past.
“There is nothing so humbling as knowing who has had this position,” he says.
“Studying my predecessors does set things in perspective. Two of them were knighted and went to run the Natural History Museum. I have not had the phone call yet…”
Sam Alberti studied chemistry at Durham and the history of science at Imperial College before writing a PhD on Victorian natural history at the universities of Leeds and Sheffield.
In 2004 he started a joint University of Manchester post at the Centre for Museology and the Manchester Museum. This involved teaching museum studies and carrying out research at the museum.
Before this he was doing post-doctoral research at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester.
He became the director of museums and archives at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2010.
Alberti has written books on the history of Manchester Museum and the history of 19th-century British medical museums.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England has two museums, both of which are at its London headquarters: the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology and the Hunterian Museum.
The Hunterian is open to the public and has its roots in the collection of human and animal remains gathered by the 18th-century surgeon John Hunter. The government bought his collection in 1799 and this was given to the Company of Surgeons, which later became the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS).
This formed the basis for a museum, which first opened its doors in 1813 as part of the new RCS building in London, where it is still located. Many items in the original collection were lost in 1941 when the college was badly damaged by bombs.
Some parts of the collection later became known as the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, which were later merged into one museum. It is now a study and teaching resource for practitioners and students and is not open to the public.
The new Hunterian Museum opened in 1963 and was revamped again in 2005. It attracts about 75,000 visitors a year.
The Hunterian is part of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Alberti became the organisation’s director of museums and archives in 2010, moving from a joint post he held at Manchester Museum and the Centre for Museology.
His current role also gives him responsibility for the college’s Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, which shares a site with the Hunterian in London’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields, across the square from Sir John Soane’s Museum.
The Hunterian opened its doors to the public on 18 May 1813 and one of the key events to celebrate its bicentenary is an exhibition opening this May. Alberti has been looking through the archive for material that will give a flavour of the museum’s fascinating history.
The Hunterian has its roots in the collection of human and animal remains gathered by the 18th-century surgeon John Hunter.
It is one of those museums sometimes described as a hidden gem although with 75,000 visitors a year it is hardly unknown.
But it has intriguing sounding temporary exhibitions, with titles such as Medicine at the Movies; Sci-Fi Surgery; and Churchill’s Dentures. There is lots of interesting history attached to the museum for Alberti to get his teeth into when developing the bicentenary programme.
Hunter was one of the founders of scientific surgery and influenced medical education, dentistry, pathology and veterinary science. He was fascinated by the physiology of animals, which is why there is so much natural history in the collection, and he kept an exotic menagerie at his Earl’s Court estate that included ostriches and leopards.
The Hunterian Museum itself has gone through many changes, including being hit by two incendiary bombs during world war two when 10,000 of Hunter’s original specimens were lost forever.
Many items have been added to the collection over the years, including the work of surgeon and artist Henry Tonks, whose pastel portraits document the procedures used by plastic surgeon Harold Gillies to reconstruct the faces of badly injured world war one soldiers.
Alberti wrote a history of 19th-century medical museums, Morbid Curiosities, while in Manchester so his move to the Hunterian, where he replaced Simon Chaplin, made sense in many ways.
“This job came along in the same month that I submitted the manuscript for the medical museums book,” says Alberti, who had worked closely with Chaplin in the past. “Even though I’d talked with Simon for years about how difficult having a real museum job was, it did seem too good not to have a go.”
There must have been strong pull factors, as Alberti says his combined role at Manchester Museum and the Centre for Museology was in many ways his dream job.
As a research fellow at the museum he could study the history of the museum, while he also enjoyed teaching museum studies at the Centre for Museology.
“Teaching hospital model”
“That job worked really nicely for me as the teaching informed the practice, which informed the teaching,” he says.
“Whatever you feel about museum studies as an enterprise, and there are justified criticisms that could be levelled at courses for churning out hundreds of over-qualified, expectant master’s students, if it is done, it should be done by people who are doing both at the same time, a sort of teaching hospital model.”
He also had a role in policy, looking at issues such as the display of human remains, which is relevant to the collections held by the Manchester Museum and the Hunterian. He also enjoyed developing exhibitions at the museum.
“I got to be involved in some interesting ones,” says Alberti, who points to Revealing Histories: Myths About Race, an exhibition about racism that he worked on with museum consultant Bernadette Lynch.
“For the most part it was a bit of a failure, but it was a very interesting process to be part of. Natural history and the mixture of nature and culture was really interesting intellectually.”
Alberti’s role as the museum’s resident historian led to the publication of Nature and Culture: Objects, Disciplines and the Manchester Museum. This focuses on the history of one institution, but also contributes to wider discussions on science, culture and museology.
Nature and Culture was published shortly before his book on 19th-century medical museums and both were reviewed in this magazine. If his in-depth knowledge of the history of museums, particularly medical ones, made him a good fit for the Hunterian job, in other ways he was a less obvious choice.
Not only had he never been the head of a museum before, he also had no experience as a line manager of staff.
Surgical education
Alberti admits it was a risk. “Fortunately, the team here is very, very good. They are very professional, and they knew what they were doing so while I learned the ropes they were getting on with it.”
Alberti also says that Chaplin and interim director Briony Hudson had left the museum in good shape. It enjoys stable funding from the college and a few years before he joined, the museum had been transformed by a £3.1m redevelopment.
The project was shortlisted for the 2007 Gulbenkian Prize for museums and galleries.
With no major capital scheme to worry about, Alberti is focusing on three main areas: continuing the public engagement programme, which is largely done through the Hunterian Museum; growing the teaching side at the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology; and developing the research potential across the collections as a whole.
He is also keen to improve the library and archives offer. Increasing public engagement should be helped by the bicentenary year. Not only is there the exhibition, the college is offering a Hunterian bicentenary fellowship to allow someone to study the collection.
And there will be a bicentenary book that will include contributions written by medical museums throughout the world. However, the aim is not just to look back – Alberti also wants to highlight the role that the museum plays in surgical education today.
A higher profile should encourage more people to study at the Wellcome Museum and to use the collections for research. Alberti knows that things won’t change overnight, but he says studying museum history has taught him to look beyond yearly cycles.
He says that working on the history and development of museums gives a long-term perspective, and an ability to resist kneejerk reactions.
“In terms of our Wellcome Museum it is baby steps – a small grant here to do the lights, working with a particular course there – but it is looking at it in decades rather than months.”
The bicentenary year is also giving Alberti the chance to think about how the Hunterian has evolved, including those who have had his role in the past.
“There is nothing so humbling as knowing who has had this position,” he says.
“Studying my predecessors does set things in perspective. Two of them were knighted and went to run the Natural History Museum. I have not had the phone call yet…”
Sam Alberti at a glance
Sam Alberti studied chemistry at Durham and the history of science at Imperial College before writing a PhD on Victorian natural history at the universities of Leeds and Sheffield.
In 2004 he started a joint University of Manchester post at the Centre for Museology and the Manchester Museum. This involved teaching museum studies and carrying out research at the museum.
Before this he was doing post-doctoral research at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester.
He became the director of museums and archives at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2010.
Alberti has written books on the history of Manchester Museum and the history of 19th-century British medical museums.
RCS Museums at a glance
The Royal College of Surgeons of England has two museums, both of which are at its London headquarters: the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology and the Hunterian Museum.
The Hunterian is open to the public and has its roots in the collection of human and animal remains gathered by the 18th-century surgeon John Hunter. The government bought his collection in 1799 and this was given to the Company of Surgeons, which later became the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS).
This formed the basis for a museum, which first opened its doors in 1813 as part of the new RCS building in London, where it is still located. Many items in the original collection were lost in 1941 when the college was badly damaged by bombs.
Some parts of the collection later became known as the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, which were later merged into one museum. It is now a study and teaching resource for practitioners and students and is not open to the public.
The new Hunterian Museum opened in 1963 and was revamped again in 2005. It attracts about 75,000 visitors a year.
