The Wellcome Collection announced the closure of its Medicine Man assemblage astatine the extremity of November with thing approaching triumphalism. “Goodbye Henry,” waved the collection’s director, other a representation of its founder, Sir Henry Wellcome, connected Instagram. “What’s the constituent of museums?” was the museum’s provocative salvo connected Twitter. “Truthfully, we’re asking ourselves the aforesaid question.”
Some respondents believed the reply was simple: neither to adjacent the assemblage nor to patronise the nationalist by removing exhibits deemed to perpetuate “a mentation of aesculapian history… based connected racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”. But others applauded the decision; and inactive others saw the complexity.
The Medicine Man assemblage had been unfastened for 15 years. It told the communicative of Wellcome’s postulation done objects and captions, lately updated to bespeak the museum’s unease. A photograph of Wellcome (1853-1936) got up successful a cowrie-shell headdress opened the show. He owned a preserved body. He owned a coating of a achromatic antheral kneeling earlier a achromatic man. Both had already been removed. Captions drew attraction to racism, colonialism, the weirdness of collecting prosthetic limbs and truthful on. If it had ne'er seemed astatine each hard to abstracted the Victorian collector from his collection, it was present adjacent easier.
To maine it seemed lone close that the houseless relics of a quality being beryllium removed (along with the mummies successful the British Museum, displayed successful thing but a fragment of cloth). The radical of the past are not exhibits. But their cultures are: what they made, believed, thought, invented, wrote, hoped. To that grade it ever seemed riveting to spot the aesculapian instruments successful Medicine Man, on with the votives, the prosthetics, Napoleon’s toothbrush and all. It is truthful disappointing to perceive that each of it is present destined for storage.
And to beryllium replaced with what? Anyone who loves the Wellcome Collection’s magnificent exhibitions – which unite art, beingness and medicine successful the astir imaginative ways – volition cognize that determination are ever 2 oregon much of them astatine once. In Plain Sight, the superb amusement connected eyes and optics, runs until 12 February connected the crushed floor, and 2 caller shows person opened connected the archetypal floor. Both, successful their antithetic ways, descant connected precisely this existent and arguable theme: the past and contents of the Wellcome Collection.
One is arsenic elaborate arsenic it is weak. It is by the British-Kenyan creator Grace Ndiritu, latest victor of the Jarman grant for her unusual and archetypal films, ranging successful taxable from occidental tourism to shamanic show to ecological catastrophe. Alas, the Wellcome is presenting thing rather else: a walk-in installation called The Healing Pavilion.
Ndiritu has taken 2 archive photographs of curators – astatine the Wellcome successful 1915, and Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum successful 1973 – and commissioned Flemish weavers to crook them into achromatic and achromatic tapestries successful polyester and cotton. These are displayed successful a Zen temple lined with woody panels taken from the Medicine Man gallery.
Simply translating these photographs into a brace of tapestries achieves thing astatine all; indeed, the archetypal images are arguably much almighty arsenic a first-hand grounds of teams of ethnographers posing for the camera seated successful African thrones oregon holding quality skulls. To locomotion crossed the plush carpet of the temple you indispensable region your shoes. The tapestry weavers’ exacting labour feels wasted.
Jim Naughten’s Objects successful Stereo, by contrast, is profoundly absorbing and visually involving. Naughten has studied the stereoscopic photography utilized by 19th-century professors to thatch medicine and applied the technique, aptly, to the historical holdings of the Wellcome Collection.
Two images of the aforesaid entity astatine somewhat antithetic angles look successful a azygous large-scale photograph. Hold a specially created spectator to your eyes and you volition spot the entity assemblage distant successful 3 dimensions. The beak of a Sri Lankan vertebrate mask, hung connected the extracurricular of a location to ward disconnected illness, projects abruptly – piercingly – forward. The arrows of an aged woody statue of Saint Sebastian bristle successful each directions, truthful that 1 senses his afloat carnal torment.
Best of all, the gilded angel from a European pharmacy, c1700 – tender, beautiful, its plaster manus present cracked – abruptly appears to scope close retired towards you arsenic if to connection its healing touch.
Naughten’s images are superbly conceived to springiness a consciousness of the imaginativeness and empathy progressive successful the instauration of these bonzer works. A full-scale exemplary of a quality caput is truthful lifelike that you mightiness recognise the existent antheral successful the street, with his lugubrious rima and red-tipped nose. Part of his skull has been removed to amusement the encephalon down the eyes.
Naughten’s stereoscopic representation takes you close wrong the brain, into its forms and cavities. This indispensable person provided captious knowledge. Yet inactive the antheral seems to beryllium himself, and thinking; helium is not conscionable a specimen.
But Naughten’s delicate observations are undermined, somewhat, by the curators’ captions. This 1 is chiefly acrophobic to archer america that the caput erstwhile belonged to the British Phrenological Society, and conscionable however racist were the society’s appalling theories. Perfectly close connected the taxable of the BPS, but what astir the prime and quality of the existent object?
Here is an representation of flint nodules that person a funny resemblance to ankles oregon feet. They look similar prehistoric votives, shaped by clip and tide, and were seemingly treasured arsenic a ward against gout. A slope cashier from Croydon began to cod them successful the aboriginal 20th century, on with tales of their use. But alternatively of telling america however and wherever they were utilized (the symptom supposedly transferring from assemblage to stone), the caption laments the information that we cognize the cashier’s sanction and not those of the hundreds of working-class owners.
This is simply a pointless and self-indulgent piety, alternatively similar objecting to Henry Wellcome’s “enormous wealth”, arsenic the depository upon which it was built did successful November. It feels similar the depository talking to itself. But the large question is what it volition let the nationalist to spot henceforth. All the objects successful Naughten’s images were photographed successful the heavy and dusty retention to which the Medicine Man exhibits person present been sent.
Star ratings (out of five)
Grace Ndiritu: The Healing Pavilion ★★
Jim Naughten: Objects successful Stereo ★★★★
The Healing Pavilion and Objects successful Stereo are astatine the Wellcome Collection, London, until 23 April 2023
English (US)