Wellcome Collection

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Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection logo.svg
The Wellcome Building.jpg
Open street map central london.svg
Red pog.svg
Location within Central London
Established2007
Location Euston Road
London, NW1
United Kingdom
Coordinates 51°31′33″N0°08′02″W / 51.525944°N 0.133889°W / 51.525944; -0.133889
TypeMuseum, library
Collections history of medicine
Visitors550,000 per annum, as of 2013 [1]
Founder Henry Wellcome
Director Melanie Keen
Public transit access Underground no-text.svg Euston Square
National Rail logo.svg Euston
Website wellcomecollection.org

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]

Contents

History and development

Staff at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, c. 1915 Wellcome Museum staff, c. 1915. Unknown photographer. The Wellcome Collection, London.jpg
Staff at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, c.1915
Hall of Statuary, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London, c. 1926. Unknown photographer. The Wellcome Collection, London Hall of Statuary, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London, c. 1926. Unknown photographer. The Wellcome Collection, London.jpg
Hall of Statuary, Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, Wigmore Street, London, c. 1926. Unknown photographer. The Wellcome Collection, London

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]

Wellcome Library

Three leeches attend a grasshopper, prescribing a course of bloodletting, cartoon by Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gerard c.1832. Wellcome Library collections. Three leeches in the role of physicians attend a grasshopper in the role of the patient and announce a course of bloodletting Wellcome V0011722.jpg
Three leeches attend a grasshopper, prescribing a course of bloodletting, cartoon by Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard c.1832. Wellcome Library collections.

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]

The Hub

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]

The Reading Room

Refurbished in 2015 as part of the Wellcome Collection's 2015 renovation, [7] the Reading Room is open to the public.

Collections

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 Medicine Man gallery in 2016 One of the halls of the Wellcome Collection, London.jpg
The Medicine Man gallery in 2016

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.

The building foyer and public areas usually include a 1950 work by Pablo Picasso [20] (originally on a wall in John Desmond Bernal's flat in Torrington Square) and one by Anthony Gormley. [21] A figure by Marc Quinn [22] 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. [23]

Wellcome Collection is digitising and openly licensing its collection; as of January 2020 it had made over 40 million images [24] 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.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euston Road</span> Thoroughfare in central London, England

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wellcome Trust</span> British healthcare research charity established in 1936

The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the 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 £1.1Bn 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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References

  1. 1 2 "Wellcome Collection London Transformation / Wilkinson Eyre Architects". 16 June 2015.
  2. Art Fund. "Museum of the Year". Art Fund.
  3. "Stories". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  4. "Error". wellcome.ac.uk.
  5. Photograph: Felix Clay/freelance (20 June 2007). "The Wellcome Collection". The Guardian.
  6. "Medical Museums". medicalmuseums.org. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  7. 1 2 Houghton, Lauren (23 February 2015). "Wellcome Collection to reopen after £17.5m refurb" . Retrieved 26 March 2016.
  8. "Melanie Keen appointed Director of Wellcome Collection". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 8 December 2022.
  9. "Wellcome Library - Home". wellcomelibrary.org.
  10. "The Hub at Wellcome Collection".
  11. "Hubbub 'about' page".
  12. "Exploration of dementia announced as second project of The Hub at Wellcome Collection". 24 March 2016.
  13. "Created Out Of Mind".
  14. "Heart n Soul at The Hub".
  15. Marshall, Alex (6 September 2019). "Is This the World's Most Accessible Museum?". The New York Times.
  16. "Being Human". Wellcome Collection.
  17. "Being Human Captions". Wellcome Collection.
  18. "Statement on the closure of our Medicine Man gallery". Wellcome Collection. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
  19. "Wellcome Collection closes 'racist, sexist and ableist' Medicine Man display". BBC News. 27 November 2022. Retrieved 1 January 2023.
  20. "Bernal's Picasso Goes On Show In London At Wellcome Collection". culture24.org.uk.
  21. "Antony Gormley". Telegraph.co.uk. 13 March 2007. Archived from the original on 21 April 2013.
  22. White Cube. "Exhibitions – White Cube". whitecube.com.
  23. Bos, Gerrit (1 October 1995). "Medical and para-medical manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections". Med. Hist. 39 (4): 516–518. doi:10.1017/S0025727300060579. ISSN   0025-7273. OCLC   8139058359. PMC   1037050 . (citing an article of Lawrence Conrad).
  24. "Wellcome Collection Digitisation Strategy" (PDF). January 2020.