The Hunterian Museum, Holborn

Our last VisitKX event - Culture and Enterprise: Made for each other? (Friday 20th November) - was held at the Hunterian Museum. The museum is tucked away inside the The Royal College of Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields in Holborn and proved to be a fascinating location to the delegates at the event and to the CreateKX staff!

In 1799 the government purchased the collection of the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793). It was placed in the care of the Company (later the Royal College) of Surgeons. Hunter's collection of around 15,000 specimens and preparations formed the nucleus of one of the greatest museums of comparative anatomy, pathology, osteology and natural history in the world. The Hunterian Collection today contains approximately 3,500 specimens and preparations from John Hunter's original collection.

The Huntarian Museum is a quirky little museum and isn't for everybody. If glistening jars of preserved innards make you queasy, or you feel a funny turn coming on at the sight of blood, it may not be for you. However, if you are at all interested in science, medicine or the history of medicine, it's a delight and gives a real appreciation for how far medicine has come.

It was also a pleasant suprise to find that the museum has an interactive and new media section in the upstairs gallery. Although, again, the videos of various operations in full colour may not be wise watching for the more sensetive visitor. The current exhibition is called 'Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots'. Patrons are invited to enter the world of medical robots where surgeons can operate without even touching their patients. Mini-robots creep, crawl and swim around your body, diagnosing disease and performing vital surgery.

This is a small museum with a huge collection, and I think it is really worth the effort of seeking it out. Their website is also worth a look and provides an in depth history to the museum and it's founder, as well as a virtual tour tool and a lecture archive from past events.

Hunterian Museum @ The Royal College of Surgeons

35 - 43 Lincoln's Inn Fields

London WC2A 3PE

T - 020 7405 3474
W - www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/galleries

Open Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 5.00pm

Free and open to all

Sci-Fi Surgery: Medical Robots

Qvist gallery

Until Wednesday 23 December 2009

Points of View: Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs

The Points of View exhibition at the British Library gives an insight into Victorian culture and presents the discovery and development of the photographic image in the 19th Century.

The exhibition is a suprisingly interactive celebration and reveals 250 fascinating images from the library's catalogue of 300,000 photographs. I enjoyed the opportunity to make 'then and now' comparisons of London streets on one of the interactive machines which are dotted around the exhibit.

We are taken through a brief history of the orgins of phtography, given an insight into early travel photography and then into the various popularisms through the century.

I particularly enjoyed the 'Criminal Types' display, with examples from the work of Alphonse Bertillon, which helped the French police to document and capture criminals with identification overlays which superseded fingerprinting. I was fascinated, if not enamoured by the 'Documenting difference' display which demonstrated the Victorian obsession with archiving and documenting data. The striking images of Africans, Native Americans and Brazillians were taken mostly for comparison purposes and seen as the only way of preserving doomed cultures in the face of colonialism. The 'Medical Case studies' were also of interest. People at the time strongly believed that your mental ailment could be reflected in the face - I looked for quite a while trying to see if would be able to tell!

The selection of stereoscopes and stereoscopic images immediately leads the mind to the recent resurgence in popularity for 3D films and television. It was fascinating to see where it all started.

One can't help but compare the many examples to how we use photography now, with almost everybody who owns a mobile phone also having the capacity to take digital photographs and even videos with it. Cameras are an integral aspect of modern life especially in one of most 'watched' nations in the world. Our fascination with documenting our lives via the medium certainly hasn't waned. There are, apparently, approximately 14 million photographs uploaded to facebook daily!

George Eastman, founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream. His goal was:

"...to make the camera as convenient as the pencil."

I would say, it certainly is that...if not on it's way to being more so.

And the search is on...

So. CreateKX has decided that we (royal not plural) need a voice for King’s Cross.

Not just any voice.

We had an idea for a blog which not only sings the praises of this vibrant, oft misunderstood locale, but also gets beneath the surface to find the beating heart and the soul of KX. What’s going on? Who’s doing it? Why and where? And so on.

Obviously CreateKX can provide ‘a’ voice: CreateKX is an independent company, run by KX dwelling/working people, in order to motivate, inspire and grow the creativity of the area, and ensure its place as a “centre for international creative excellence”. This is an ever-mounting challenge, since “one of the greatest development and regeneration opportunities in Europe” is about to let loose – in the form of dust, diggers and diverse expectations - on our doorstep. Not to mention those 45 million people passing through the new St. Pancras International every year, come this November.

CreateKX aims to ensure that the regeneration of the area doesn’t damage but re-energises KX’s creative component. And we want creative people to want to live, work and play here. CreateKX uses it’s voice in a way which organisations must, in order to fulfil their essential function; acting as a “champion” and “enabler” and “signposter”.

But this is not the right voice for BlogKX. The voice of BloggerKX must represent and inspire, but also needs an independent view, as well as exceptional eloquence and excellent, all-pervading insider knowledge of just what goes down in KX.

So, to source this precious gem of a blogger we are whittling down thousands of potential diamonds in the rough, until we find the perfect candidate. So, read on while I grill the next contender in our own personal online 'blogerview' for the illustrious role of BloggerKX.

Question 1.
Why you then?

king's cross