Ken Arnold
Biographic Data
| ID | 3785386 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ken Arnold |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ken |
| FAMILY NAME | Arnold |
| SIGNATURE | ARNOLD K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Medical Museion, Copenhagen, Denmark |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Reawakening the Curious Muses
This conversation between the founding and current directors of the multi-award-winning Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen was held online, COVID-19-style, in the spring of 2021. We have different backgrounds and instincts. One of us is an academic historian of science, who almost accidentally ended up also running a museum. The other has spent decades working in museums, and then found himself hired as a university professor. Here w…
Museums in the Pandemic
Throughout human history, the spread of disease has closed borders, restricted civic movement, and fueled fear of the unknown; yet at the same time, it has helped build cultural resilience. On 11 March 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. The novel zoonotic disease, first reported to the WHO in December 2019, was no longer restricted to Wuhan or to China, as the highly contagious coronavirus had spread to mo…
Houses for the Curious
This article considers a curiosity-driven approach to curating focused on material culture that visitors encounter in physical spaces. Drawing on research into historical curiosity cabinets, it explores how a contemporary notion of curiosity has been put into practice in the new breed of culturally enlightened museums exploring interdisciplinary approaches to medicine, health, life, and art. Based on an inaugural professorial address at Copenhage…
Cabinets for the Curious
The last few years has, within museums, witnessed nothing short of a revolution. Worried that the very institution was itself in danger of becoming a dusty, forgotten, culturally irrelevant exhibit, vigorous efforts have been made to reshape the museum mission. Fearing that history was coming to be ignored by modern society, many institutions have instead marketed a de-intellectualised heritage, overly relying on computer technology to captivate …
A very public affair
What happens in interdisciplinary practices between the arts and sciences? What determines their successes and failures, and how they should be conducted? Here I propose that we can deepen our understanding of them by looking at the role of one specific and, to my mind, vital aspect of many (most?) successful art/science collaborations, namely their presence in public. More specifically, I suggest that museums, having played a crucial historical …
The house' as a framing device for public engagement in STEM museums
In the last five to ten years, several science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) museums have been experimenting with new forms of public engagement, aiming to be places for curiosity-driven investigation of the cultures of science via multiple perspectives, bringing artists, scientists, researchers, clinicians, members of the public and others together. Yet these diverse and rapidly evolving sites lack a clear definition of their fami…
The politics of museums
Do you like your politics with a big “P”, fleshed out with abstract concepts? If so, Clive Gray's The politics of museums, the latest addition to Palgrave Macmillan's new book series, New direction
Medical Instruments in Museums
This essay proposes that our understanding of medical instruments might benefit from adding a more forthright concern with their immediate presence to the current historical focus on simply decoding their meanings and context. This approach is applied to the intriguingly tricky question of what actually is meant by a "medical instrument." It is suggested that a pragmatic part of the answer might lie simply in reconsidering the holdings of medical…
Possessing Nature
Medical Instruments in Museums
This essay proposes that our understanding of medical instruments might benefit from adding a more forthright concern with their immediate presence to the current historical focus on simply decoding their meanings and context. This approach is applied to the intriguingly tricky question of what actually is meant by a "medical instrument." It is suggested that a pragmatic part of the answer might lie simply in reconsidering the holdings of medical…
A very public affair
What happens in interdisciplinary practices between the arts and sciences? What determines their successes and failures, and how they should be conducted? Here I propose that we can deepen our understanding of them by looking at the role of one specific and, to my mind, vital aspect of many (most?) successful art/science collaborations, namely their presence in public. More specifically, I suggest that museums, having played a crucial historical …
Possessing Nature
Medical Instruments in Museums
This essay proposes that our understanding of medical instruments might benefit from adding a more forthright concern with their immediate presence to the current historical focus on simply decoding their meanings and context. This approach is applied to the intriguingly tricky question of what actually is meant by a "medical instrument." It is suggested that a pragmatic part of the answer might lie simply in reconsidering the holdings of medical…
The politics of museums
Do you like your politics with a big “P”, fleshed out with abstract concepts? If so, Clive Gray's The politics of museums, the latest addition to Palgrave Macmillan's new book series, New direction
Cabinets for the Curious
The last few years has, within museums, witnessed nothing short of a revolution. Worried that the very institution was itself in danger of becoming a dusty, forgotten, culturally irrelevant exhibit, vigorous efforts have been made to reshape the museum mission. Fearing that history was coming to be ignored by modern society, many institutions have instead marketed a de-intellectualised heritage, overly relying on computer technology to captivate …
A very public affair
What happens in interdisciplinary practices between the arts and sciences? What determines their successes and failures, and how they should be conducted? Here I propose that we can deepen our understanding of them by looking at the role of one specific and, to my mind, vital aspect of many (most?) successful art/science collaborations, namely their presence in public. More specifically, I suggest that museums, having played a crucial historical …
The house' as a framing device for public engagement in STEM museums
In the last five to ten years, several science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) museums have been experimenting with new forms of public engagement, aiming to be places for curiosity-driven investigation of the cultures of science via multiple perspectives, bringing artists, scientists, researchers, clinicians, members of the public and others together. Yet these diverse and rapidly evolving sites lack a clear definition of their fami…
Houses for the Curious
This article considers a curiosity-driven approach to curating focused on material culture that visitors encounter in physical spaces. Drawing on research into historical curiosity cabinets, it explores how a contemporary notion of curiosity has been put into practice in the new breed of culturally enlightened museums exploring interdisciplinary approaches to medicine, health, life, and art. Based on an inaugural professorial address at Copenhage…
Museums in the Pandemic
Throughout human history, the spread of disease has closed borders, restricted civic movement, and fueled fear of the unknown; yet at the same time, it has helped build cultural resilience. On 11 March 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) classified COVID-19 as a pandemic. The novel zoonotic disease, first reported to the WHO in December 2019, was no longer restricted to Wuhan or to China, as the highly contagious coronavirus had spread to mo…
Reawakening the Curious Muses
This conversation between the founding and current directors of the multi-award-winning Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen was held online, COVID-19-style, in the spring of 2021. We have different backgrounds and instincts. One of us is an academic historian of science, who almost accidentally ended up also running a museum. The other has spent decades working in museums, and then found himself hired as a university professor. Here w…
Sociology (6 works) · Museums and Cultural Heritage (5 works) · Art (4 works) · History (4 works) · Media studies (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Exhibition (3 works) · Law (3 works) · Law (3 works)