96. Tegan Kehoe Explores American Healthcare Through 50 Museum Artifacts
Welcome to Museum Archipelago in Your Inbox, which does exactly what it says on the tin. Museum Archipelago, your audio guide to the rocky landscape of museums, is hosted by me, Ian Elsner.
Public historian and writer Tegan Kehoe knows that museum visitors act differently around the same object presented in different contexts—like how the same visitor excited by a bayonet that causes a triangular wound in an exhibit of 18th-century weapons could be disgusted by that same artifact when it’s presented in an exhibit of 18th-century medicine. Kehoe, who specializes in the history of healthcare and medical science, is attuned to how objects can inspire empathy, especially in the healthcare context.
Kehoe’s new book, Exploring American Healthcare through 50 Historic Treasures, looks for opportunities for empathy in museum exhibits all around the U.S. Each of the 50 artifacts presented in the book becomes a physical lens through which to examine the complexities of American society’s relationship with health, from a 1889 bottle of “Hostetter’s Celebrated Stomach Bitters” that claimed to cure a host of ailments to activist Ed Roberts’s power wheelchair that he customized to work with his range of motion.
In this episode, Kehoe describes how her work has helped her see tropes in the way museums tend to present medical topics and artifacts, how the aura of medical expertise is often culturally granted, and how living through the current coronavirus pandemic changed her relationship with many of the artifacts.
Gallery Continues ⏭️
In March 2020, as most museums shut their doors, we looked at how museums present public health with Raven Forrest Fruscalzo, Content Developer at the Field Museum in Chicago and host of the excellent Tiny Vampires Podcast.
In this episode which pairs nicely with the latest, Forrest Fruscalzo discusses how museums can be a trusted source of public health information and how museums are rethinking their interaction with the public during the pandemic.
Archipelago at the Movies🍿Palace of Delights (1982)
You should watch Palace of Delights. It's a glowing 1982 documentary about the Exploratorium in San Francisco describing a day in the life of the museum and its workers.
The documentary features interviews with museum director Frank Oppenheimer, who believed that the gulf between the daily experience of most people and the complexity of science and technology was widening. He founded the Exploratorium to try to bridge that gap with an emphasis on physical interactive exhibits designed in-house. As we follow Oppenheimer around the Exploratorium, we find him fixing broken buttons, describing what makes a good interactive exhibit, and arguing about budget shortfalls.
Greg Sprick, Technical Director at RLMG, was in awe of the Exploratorium from the first time he visited. He joins us on today's episode of Archipelago at the Movies🍿 as we tackle Oppenheimer's influence on the rest of the museum industry, the process of prototyping interactive exhibits, and what it's like to go behind the scenes at the Exploratorium.