Past exhibitions

30 September 2021 – 16 January 2022

“The world is in you” is based on new biomedical research, that attempts to understand our bodies, our health and our world. The exhibition, which mixes art and science, took place at Kunsthal Charlottenborg.

 

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13 November 2020 – 16 May 2021

In a series of photographs of historical objects from the collections of Medical Museion, Nicolai Howalt captures encounters between science and epidemics. The works fixate – in the same manner as the blobs of bacteria substrate on the slides – surfaces of contact between disease and science. They unite microbes, history and the scientific attempt to capture epidemics in a set of single images.

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November 2020
Z-Time – The Art and Science of Circadian Rhythms

In November 2020, the exhibition Z-Time opened its doors on Medical Museion. The exhibition is about circadian rhythms, time and chronobiological research.

åbnede udstillingen Z-Time på Medicinsk Museion. Udstillingen handler om døgnrytmer, tid og kronobiologisk forskning. The texts from the exhibition are available digitally.

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4 October 2012 – 2 April 2017

The exhibition tackles one of the biggest health issues of our time: Obesity and overweight. Why is it so hard to get rid of the fat, once it’s there?

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2016

In Heirloom, Gina Czarnecki grew skin portraits of her daughters from their own cells onto glass casts. In the process, she subverted the notion of the portrait representing a person not in paint or oils, but with their own biological material.

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14 May – 31 August 2014

Metascent was an experimental exhibition on human scent. In the exhibition, one could smell and dwell on human scent in all its facets. Scent symptoms from the diseased body and scent trails from the healthy body were collected as we tried to make them available for the noses of visitors.

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11 April – 17 August 2014

Light Break is based on the light therapy developed by doctor and Nobel laureate Niels Ryberg Finsen ​​in the late 1800s. Artist Nicolai Howalt was inspired by this part of medical history to work with the sun in his photographic practice. In a series of unique photographic work he examines and makes visible the invisible part of sun light, both its life-giving and destructive rays.

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2013

Medicotek was an exhibition created in cooperation between Medical Museion and Danish MedTech Society to understand how Danish biomedical engineering have developed over the past 40 years – from hearing aids to ultrasound to advanced diagnostic tools, which have not yet been launched. We displayed the individual successes of biomedical engineering and followed in the footsteps of the medical engineer to show, what has been – and is being – engaged with and worked on; e.g. how the development of electromagnetic stimulation of the brain has happened in close cooperation with clinical research environments, that has been a part of understanding, what this technique could be applied on. Or the history of the NovoPen, which the company did not believe in in the beginning, but which turned out to be one of the biggest successes in the history of Danish biomedical engineering. The contexts of the different stories are very different, but it was our aim, that they would give a combined insight into the conditions, under which the Danish medico business works. What is needed to turn ideas into reality, how can you maintain development and what happens when technologies reach their end destination?

4 September – 15 December, 2009

This temporary exhibition was curated by Thomas Söderqvist for the Faculty of Health Sciences in connection with the opening of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Centre for Protein Research and funded independently from this project by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The exhibition involved a large number of researchers and companies in the region and thus also served as a model for how exhibition making can be a co-operative effort between historians, museologists, biomedical scientists and the production and marketing departments of private enterprises.

11 June – 13 December, 2009

Split + Splice was about the inter-relations between the culture of biomedicine and the enormous complexities of 21^st century living. The exhibition explored these complexities through the material culture, objects and instruments used by biomedical practitioners in research and in clinical activities. It was the first major research-based exhibition project at Medical Museion and involved a lot of collecting. In that way, the exhibition was a major breakthrough in the museum’s vision to integrate research, collecting and exhibition making. It won the international Dibner Award for Excellence in Museum Exhibits in 2010.

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25 May – 13 December 2009

The exhibition was curated by cand. mag. Rikke Vindberg as a spin-off from her earlier combined research and acquisition project on scientific posters. The objects were collected in co-operation with researchers at the National Hospital and the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen. This little exhibition too marks the transition towards a more aesthetically conscious exhibition practice.

21 January – 12 April, 2009

Exhibition on the history of biomedicine. The exhibition was supported by Lundbeckfonden and the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Design4Science was curated by Shirley Wheller, Sunderland University.

11 October 2007 – 13 May 2009

100 light years was a small photo exhibition curated by by Liv Carlé Mortensen, who documented the lives of 15 centenarians in photo montages in connection with “Oldetopia”.

11 October, 2007 – 14 December, 2008

“Oldetopia – an exhibition on age and ageing” was Medical Museion’s first big temporary exhibition and also a great public success. “Oldetopia” put into practice our focus on contemporary biomedicine in a social, cultural and historical context, and was the first exhibition in which we deliberately thought in terms of the museological notion of presence effects of material objects. It involved co-operation with medical researchers and drew on new acquisitions, and thus exemplified the close integration between (museological and medical) research, acquisitioning and exhibition design.
Curated by Camilla Mordhorst. Co-funded by Assens Fond/Biofarma Logistik

31 May – 3 June 2008

The exhibition curated by Søren Bak-Jensen in connection with the 2008 Annual Meeting of the European Society for Anesthesiology (Euroanaesthesia 2008) at Bella Congress Center, Copenhagen. It displayed objects related to the treatment of polio victims during the epidemic in Copenhagen in 1952, the establishment of the first intensive care units in Copenhagen hospitals, and the development of equipment for monitoring anesthetised patients from the 1950s to the present.

Besides drawing approx. 2500 visitors in three days, its main importance was as a museological experiment in creating exhibitions in co-operation with external partners, including medical devices companies, in an extra-museum setting, and with a keen eye on the aesthetics of historical medical objects.

2 September, 2007

In connection with the international workshop and conference on “Biomedicine and Art”, 30 August – 3 September 2007, we commisioned an artwork installation by sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard on the theme biomedicine and sound art. The resultat was “Labyrinthitis”, a sound installation based on current research at the Centre for Applied Hearing Research, Technical University of Denmark, on the physiology and dynamic anatomy of the inner ear; it was performed on 2 September 2007.

30 March – 31 December, 2007

“Rigshospitalet in the past, present – and future” was an exhibition in the main entrance hall of the National Hospital. The exhibition was funded by the hospital, curated by cand.mag. Rikke Vindberg under supervision of Camilla Mordhorst in co-operation with hospital staff. It involved extensive on-site research and acquisitions of objects from laboratories and wards, and was thus an example of how to make an exhibition about contemporary biomedicine in dialogue with a hospital.

24 August – 15 October, 2006

The street window exhibition “Sygdommens ansigt”, curated by the artist group Huskegruppen in co-operation with Medical Museion, took Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Illness as Metaphor” (1978) as the point of departure. This was our first experience of working together with artists.

4 February – 1 October, 2006

The first small temporary exhibition “Everybody has the right to a wished for child – on contraception and family planning through 50 years”, curated by Camilla Mordhorst. A small, object-rich exhibition, the first in a series, which emphasised the material culture of medicine and public health. The exhibition largely utilised the museum’s own collections and did not involve much new research.