Established | 2007 |
---|---|
Location | Euston Road London, NW1 United Kingdom |
Coordinates | 51°31′33″N0°08′02″W / 51.525944°N 0.133889°W |
Type | Museum, library |
Collections | history of medicine |
Visitors | 550,000 per annum, as of 2013 [1] |
Founder | Henry Wellcome |
Director | Melanie Keen |
Public transit access | Euston Square Euston |
Website | wellcomecollection |
Wellcome Collection is a museum and library based at 183 Euston Road, London, England, displaying a mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks exploring "ideas about the connections between medicine, life and art". [2] Founded in 2007, the Wellcome Collection attracts over 550,000 visitors per year. [1] The venue offers contemporary and historic exhibitions and collections, the Wellcome Library, a café, a bookshop and conference facilities. In addition to its physical facilities, Wellcome Collection maintains a website of original articles and archived images related to health. [3]
Wellcome Collection is part of the Wellcome Trust, founded by Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853–1936). An extensive and enthusiastic traveller, Henry Wellcome amassed a huge collection of books, paintings and objects on the theme of historical development of medicine worldwide. There was an earlier Wellcome Historical Medical Museum at 54a Wigmore Street, housing artefacts from around the world. [4]
The Wellcome Trust moved its administrative offices into their new Gibbs Building (designed for the Trust by Michael Hopkins and Partners) on the adjoining site in Euston Road, completed 2004: thereby creating an opportunity for a new public venue in the old Wellcome Building. The collection opened to the public in June 2007. [5]
Due to its historical holdings, the Wellcome Collection is a member of The London Museums of Health & Medicine group. [6]
Having been open since 2007, Wellcome Collection re-opened with additional public spaces in October 2015. [7]
Melanie Keen took over as the director of the Wellcome Collection in 2019. [8]
The Wellcome Library provides access to collections of books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day. [9]
Located on the 5th floor of the Collection, The Hub is a space for researchers to collaborate, which "brings together different voices and expertise as part of an experiment to see what new knowledge can be created". [10]
The first residents of The Hub, Hubbub, explored the dynamics of "rest, noise, tumult, activity and work" from October 2014 to July 2016. [11]
In October 2016-July 2018 Created Out of Mind, a group exploring dementia and the arts began their residency. [12] "Many of the group’s core members came from the Dementia Research Centre (DRC) at University College London. The team aimed to explore what dementia means to all of us, as well as challenging definitions of the condition". [13]
From 2018 to 2020, award-winning creative arts company and charity Heart n Soul took up residency at The Hub "exploring ideas like ‘normality’ and the value of difference between us all". [14]
Refurbished in 2015 as part of the Wellcome Collection's 2015 renovation, [7] the Reading Room is open to the public.
The collection is divided into several galleries. Being Human is a permanent exhibition opened in 2019 designed with the help of disabled artists and activists within the frame of the social model of disability, making it one of the world's most accessible galleries. [15] Being Human explores what it means to be human in the 21st century, with a focus on personal stories, and is split into four parts: genetics, minds & bodies, infection, and environmental breakdown. [16] It includes art by Yinka Shonibare CBE, Latai Taumoepeau, Kia LaBeija, Mary Beth Heffernan, and Isaac Murdoch's "Water is Life" banner designed for the Standing Rock protests. [17]
The museum previously hosted Medicine Man, a permanent exhibition displaying a small part of Henry Wellcome's collection. The exhibition closed permanently on 27 November 2022 after running for fifteen years. While part of an ongoing programme to update how the collection is displayed, the closure was perceived to be a result of concerns over "racist, sexist and ableist theories and language". [18] [19]
The main exhibition space hosts a changing programme of events and exhibitions. The space has included work by Felicity Powell and Bobby Baker. In 2024, an exhibition highlighting the exploitation of workers, and entitled Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights, included work by Cindy Sissokho, Lindsey Mendick, Lubaina Himid, Louise Bourgeois, Kelly O'Brien and Shannon Alonzo. [20]
The building foyer and public areas usually include a 1950 work by Pablo Picasso [21] (originally on a wall in John Desmond Bernal's flat in Torrington Square) and one by Anthony Gormley. [22] A figure by Marc Quinn [23] was originally lying unprotected on the stone floor, then moved inside a glass case, and is also not currently on view. The collection includes 17,500 magic-medical amulets, talismans and charms picked up by Henry Wellcome in Islamic North Africa and elsewhere in the world. [24]
Wellcome Collection is digitising and openly licensing its collection; as of January 2020 it had made over 40 million images [25] from 325,000 items (books, manuscripts, archives, artworks, audio and video material etc.) available on wellcomecollection.org and via a range of third-party services.
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is Britain's first public museum. Its first building was erected in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities that Elias Ashmole gave to the University of Oxford in 1677. It is also the world's second university museum, after the establishment of the Kunstmuseum Basel in 1661 by the University of Basel.
The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019.
Sir Antony Mark David Gormley is a British sculptor. His works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool; and Event Horizon, a multipart site installation which premiered in London in 2007, then subsequently in Madison Square in New York City (2010), São Paulo, Brazil (2012), and Hong Kong (2015–16).
Euston Road is a road in Central London that runs from Marylebone Road to King's Cross. The route is part of the London Inner Ring Road and forms part of the London congestion charge zone boundary. It is named after Euston Hall, the family seat of the Dukes of Grafton, who had become major property owners in the area during the mid-19th century.
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge. It is located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge. It was founded in 1816 under the will of Richard FitzWilliam, 7th Viscount FitzWilliam (1745–1816), and comprises one of the best collections of antiquities and modern art in western Europe. With over half a million objects and artworks in its collections, the displays in the museum explore world history and art from antiquity to the present. The treasures of the museum include artworks by Monet, Picasso, Rubens, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Van Dyck, and Canaletto, as well as a winged bas-relief from Nimrud. Admission to the public is always free.
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome to fund research to improve human and animal health. The aim of the Trust is to "support science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone." It had a financial endowment of £29.1 billion in 2020, making it the fourth wealthiest charitable foundation in the world. In 2012, the Wellcome Trust was described by the Financial Times as the United Kingdom's largest provider of non-governmental funding for scientific research, and one of the largest providers in the world. According to their annual report, the Wellcome Trust spent GBP £1.1 billion on charitable activities across their 2019/2020 financial year. According to the OECD, the Wellcome Trust's financing for 2019 development increased by 22% to US$327 million.
Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome was an American pharmaceutical entrepreneur. He founded the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Company with his colleague Silas Burroughs in 1880, which is one of the four large companies to eventually merge to form GlaxoSmithKline. He left a large amount of capital for charitable work in his will, which was used to form the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's largest medical charities. He was a keen collector of medical artefacts which are now managed by the Science Museum, London, and a small selection of which are displayed at the Wellcome Collection.
The Wellcome Library is a free library and Museum based in central London. It was developed from the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the 20th century. Henry Wellcome's interest was the history of medicine in a broad sense and included subjects such as alchemy or witchcraft, but also anthropology and ethnography. Since Henry Wellcome's death in 1936, the Wellcome Trust has been responsible for maintaining the Library's collection and funding its acquisitions. The library is free and open to the public.
The Arts Council Collection is a national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art. It was founded in 1946. The collection continues to acquire works each year. The Arts Council Collection reaches its audience through loans to public institutions, touring exhibitions, digital and outreach projects. The collection supports artists based in the UK through the purchase and display of their work, safeguarding it.
The Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, is a museum of the history of medicine adjacent to St James's University Hospital. It opened in March 1997 as the Thackray Medical Museum. In 1998 it won "Museum of the Year" and has other awards including in 2004 both the "Excellence in England Small Tourist Attraction of the Year" and "Sandford Award for Heritage Education".
Torrington Square is a square in Bloomsbury, owned by the University of London, located in central London, England. Today, the square is largely non-residential since most of the houses have been demolished by the university. The southern end of the square is dominated by the University of London's Senate House. Birkbeck College and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) are also located here. To the southwest is Malet Street and to the southeast is Russell Square. The square is the site of a weekly farmers' market, held on Thursdays.
Surgeons' Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland, is the headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd). It houses the Surgeons' Hall Museum, and the library and archive of the RCSEd. The present Surgeons' Hall was designed by William Henry Playfair and completed in 1832, and is a category A listed building.
The Hunterian Museum is a museum of anatomical specimens in London, located in the building of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
An exhibition, in the most general sense, is an organized presentation and display of a selection of items. In practice, exhibitions usually occur within a cultural or educational setting such as a museum, art gallery, park, library, exhibition hall, or World's fairs. Exhibitions can include many things such as art in both major museums and smaller galleries, interpretive exhibitions, natural history museums and history museums, and also varieties such as more commercially focused exhibitions and trade fairs. They can also foster community engagement, dialogue, and education, providing visitors with opportunities to explore diverse perspectives, historical contexts, and contemporary issues. Additionally, exhibitions frequently contribute to the promotion of artists, innovators, and industries, acting as a conduit for the exchange of ideas and the celebration of human creativity and achievement.
The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL (2000–2012) was a research and teaching centre within University College London dedicated to the history of medicine. It was created through a grant from the Wellcome Trust, on the model of other Wellcome Trust Centres, as a national and international centre of excellence in its field. As a university department, it was administered by an internal governance committee chaired by the centre's Director, who was in turn advised by an international committee of external academic specialists in the history of science and medicine; until 2009, the Director reported to the Dean of Life Sciences and a governing committee on which the dean also sat.
Some African objects had been collected by Europeans for centuries, and there had been industries producing some types, especially carvings in ivory, for European markets in some coastal regions. Between 1890 and 1918 the volume of objects greatly increased as Western colonial expansion in Africa led to the removal of many pieces of sub-Saharan African art that were subsequently brought to Europe and displayed. These objects entered the collections of natural history museums, art museums and private collections in Europe and the United States. About 90% of Africa's cultural heritage is believed to be located in Europe, according to French art historians.
Science and Charity is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso, which he painted in Barcelona in 1897. It is an example of one of Picasso's earliest works, as he painted it when he was only 15 years old. The painting depicts a formal composition of a sick patient in bed, attended by a doctor and a nun holding a child. It was the culmination of Picasso's academic training and displays his talent as an artist before he moved away from this style to pursue his own artistic career. The painting is housed in the collection of the Museu Picasso, Barcelona.
Remai Modern is a public art museum in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. The art museum is situated along the west bank of the South Saskatchewan River, at the River Landing development in Saskatoon's Central Business District. The museum's 11,582 square metres (124,670 sq ft) building was designed by Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB Architects in association with Architecture49.
Frederick Noël Lawrence Poynter FLA was a British librarian and medical historian who served as director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine from 1964 to 1973.
Paira Mall (1874-1957) was an Indian medical doctor, linguist, and collector for Henry Wellcome's Historical Medical Museum, in London.