Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries Open at London's Science Museum

In November 2019, the Science Museum in London inaugurated Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries, a permanent section dedicated to medical history. Designed by WilkinsonEyre, the five galleries occupy over 3,000 square meters on the museum's first floor, displaying more than 3,000 objects and artworks from the collections of Henry Wellcome and the Science Museum Group. Highlights include 200-year-old anatomical wax models, the first stethoscope, Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccination lancets, medical chests from Everest and Antarctic expeditions, an iron lung used by polio patients, the world's first MRI scanner, a protein model, and a paramedic bicycle. Visitors can enter a Victorian pharmacy and engage with interactive experiences, such as simulating a heart transplant or treating a critically ill patient. Audio and video recordings feature patients and doctors sharing personal stories. Sir Ian Blatchford, director of the Science Museum Group, described the galleries as "intellectually adventurous, rich in personal stories and sometimes incredibly moving." For the opening, four contemporary artists created site-specific works: Siân Davey's life-size photographs exploring normality in medicine; Marc Quinn's bronze sculpture Self-Conscious Gene inspired by the tattooed body of Rick Genest (Zombie Boy); Studio Roso's Bloom, a rotating helix sculpture representing disease spread; and Eleanor Crook's Santa Medicina, a bronze figure of a surgeon-saint prompting reflection on mortality.