This list is in no order of excellence they are all brilliant – and all very different in their approach to communicating science to a wider audience of visitors and academics alike.
Science Museum
Big scale, glamorous and exciting with cabinets crammed full of stuff. It begs a question as to whether this is engaging or too much to take in at once. The Science Museum is about spectacle and excitement rather than quiet reflection and learning. Maybe one of the Science Museum’s main functions is to excite people in the possibilities that science affords and to start a person’s life time interest in science.
Science Gallery
The regularly changing displays of sci art pieces demand consideration and thought. This is not as exciting and colourful as the Science Museum, but a place that takes its science and art very seriously. The most obviously art in science venue in London.
Wellcome Collection
Gets it right on many counts as far as I am concerned. It has the drama of a big gallery, a mix of interactive artworks and stand-alone pieces that demand attention. When I was last there a presenter, looking very much like a former nurse and with great knowledge and authority, conducted a display, using knitted neurons, to teach us about the nervous system. The session was accessible, informative and felt wonderfully spontaneous. The audience, about twenty of us, were enthralled. I have a separate post about the Medicine Man exhibition at the Wellcome which has been moved from its original home in the Science Museum.
Gordon Pathology Museum
Limited in its ability to put on a grand show by the need to protect the dignity and privacy of human remains, as outlined in the Human Tissue Act 2017, the Gordon offers something quite different. If you are lucky enough to be allowed to visit, usually by personal arrangement, it offers a chance to step back into the 18th century and see one of the world’s largest collections of pathological specimens. The Gordon is for medics, anatomists and those with a very serious interest in the workings of the human body. If you get fed up with all the bottles of human remains the artwork is rather good too. Public engagement is very much for the initiated, but the spectacle of all those floors containing hundreds of glass bottles of specimens dating from the 16th century isn’t one you’re likely to forget.
Royal College of Physicians
A reserved, academic place catering for medics and researchers intent on serious stuff. Its position hidden away in Regents Park doesn’t make it the most well known of venues either. The RCP is housed in a beautiful Modernist building that will always get my vote, but possibly does not provide the right sort of space for mass public engagement. Too many floors, too many small rooms hidden from view and a tiny actual exhibition gallery make it generally a bit inaccessible apart from the doctors who are usually present having conferences. The newly introduced sci art pieces are a welcome addition and the film piece was particularly interesting. But I’d imagine that it’s hard for the curator to introduce art works into a physical space that isn’t really designed for exhibiting art.
Old Operating Theatre
Super, fascinating and accessible. How many more adjectives can I throw at this lovely place. When I was there a group of completely enthralled local school children were watching an actor playing a surgeon in the operating theatre. The ancient operating theatre was brought brick by brick from St Thomas’s Hospital. The children loved the descriptions of blood and gore, obviously, but asked very thoughtful questions about surgery after the presentation was over. The displays in the rest of the building are varied, interesting and accessible for all ages. The Old Operating Theatre has the great advantage of being focussed on one thing only and this it does very well. However if you don’t fancy climbing up 52 steps to enter the building it’s not for you. Sadly physical disability friendly this is not.
Main image at top of page: Birnbaum, H (2016) OUTBREAK Ceramics (Photofunia editing) Available at:https://photofunia.com/. Accessed 2016 Author’s private collection
Public Facing 
1 Comment