Following concerns
A museum in London is closing one of its main exhibitions following concerns over “racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”.
The Wellcome Collection says the Medicine Man display is ending after a 15-year run. Founder Henry Wellcome, who died in 1936, collected more than a million objects to give an insight into global health and medicine. The museum has marked the closure as a “significant turning point”.
Controversial objects include a 1916 painting titled “A Medical Missionary Attending to a Sick African” which depicts an African person kneeling in front of a white missionary.
It’s pretty obvious why that would be controversial. I wonder if they could just mark it historical with a note that views and attitudes have changed.
The museum said in a statement on Twitter: “We can’t change our past. But we can work towards a future where we give voice to the narratives and lived experiences of those who have been silenced, erased and ignored.
“We tried to do this with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions. But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language.”
At least they didn’t say “transphobic theories and language.”
I don’t know. I’m seeing a lot of skepticism, but maybe the Wellcome would benefit from some updating. Then again maybe the people doing the updating will be a shade too righteous or smug or both to do a good job of it.
We can’t change our past, but a hell of a lot of people are sure trying. I do see the problem with that picture, but your suggestion seems to make more sense than shutting down the whole thing…or maybe they could just remove pieces that are problematic.
Of course, in a world where all of science, medicine, and math have been declared imperialist and colonialist, that might be difficult for the righteous, smug, wokesters to accept.
It’s so hard to tell. There’s definitely plenty of cultural baggage around that needs updating, but there are also a lot of loonies around and it’s hard to tell who can be trusted to do the updating without adding a lot of new bullshit. What to do?!?!
It sounds somewhat like the issue of tearing down statues.
In what cases should we just take them down & in what should we add a note that the statue is of someone who did this good thing for which s/he is being honored but also that thing which was harmful.
As I noted somewhere in the last year or two, fighting for the Confederacy is something harmful, but a Confederate general *might* have done some positive action which should be noted. A reply to that directed my attention to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Longstreet who after what I call ‘The War of the Slaveholders Treason’ worked with the Republican party & so was reviled by the ‘Lost Cause’ southerners.
Ophelia: well, to start with, serious attempts should be made to repatriate all items that were stolen or acquired under duress. Human specimens that weren’t freely donated shouldn’t be on display. And while I love medical-history museums, I think we do need to be honest with ourselves about the freak-show aspect of looking at pickled megacolons and conjoined twins.
Piglet, sure, I agree.
Ophelia: and to me, that’s the whole problem. There’s been so much scaremongering about how it’s a slippery slope from, say, giving Sarah Baartman a dignified burial, or including commentary about how this painting depicts an enslaved person, or hopefully repatriating the Elgin Marbles, to closing all museums altogether and replacing them with hectoring ‘woke’ free-form poetry. Well done for playing into that, folx. Well done indeed.