Surgical museum opens after refit
By Douglas Shepherd
Surgeons are re-opening the Hunterian Museum in central London on Tuesday 16 May after a six-year closure for a £4.6m re-design. Admission is free.
Created by award-winning design studio Casson Mann, it is part of a larger redevelopment of the Royal College of Surgeons of England’s headquarters at Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
John Hunter, painted by Joshua Reynolds
The Museum displays over 2,000 anatomical preparations made by the 18th-century surgeon anatomist John Hunter.
Specimens are displayed alongside instruments, equipment, models, paintings and archive material, tracing the history of surgery from ancient times to the latest robot-assisted operations.
Teamwork is at the heart of a new film of an orthopaedic operation at Wirral University Teaching Hospital. Time-lapse editing condenses a 90-minute operation to just ten, revealing a ballet-like choreography as surgical staff give all their attention to the patient.
New audiovisuals and objects on public display for the first time can also be found on the museum’s website, which is rich with recently digitised collections material, online exhibitions, films, talks, games and key visitor information.
Where history has been made
Dawn Kemp, the college’s director of museums and special collections, said: ‘The Hunterian Museum has been a place where history has been made, both for good and bad – the place where dinosaurs were named, where Charles Darwin came for advice on the fossils he found half the world away, where the pioneer of computing, Charles Babbage, sent his brain to be put on display.
‘It is also where some of those closely involved in the Western “colonial project” developed sinister and awful ideas on racial theory.
‘Its history makes it a unique place to contemplate what it is to be human. A place to reflect and consider our shared and finite natural world and our responsibility to care for the well-being of our fellow humans and all living things. A place to exchange ideas and views and to review our shared histories through the widest possible lens.’
Casson Mann founder and director Roger Mann said: ‘To re-imagine the display of the Hunterian Museum’s rich and varied collection was a unique opportunity to create a series of jewel-like galleries full of surprising and curious juxtapositions and wonderful stories.
‘We hope that medical professionals and visitors alike will enjoy this journey of discovery and appreciate the extraordinary contributions of John Hunter and others who pioneered the field of medical and surgical knowledge.’