London’s Hunterian Museum reopens today (16 May) following a six-year redevelopment, offering a refreshed home for its collection of pickled body parts and other remains.
The £4.6 million project by design studio Casson Mann is part of a wider £100m redevelopment of the Royal College of Surgeons by architects Hawkins\Brown.
The institution in Lincoln’s Inn Fields contains the collection of 18th century surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. It includes more than 2,000 jars of pickled body parts and organs to demonstrate human anatomy.
It also features specimens of skulls, jaws, lips, tongues, throats and teeth, as well as penises and ovaries, and ancient remains.
These are showcased alongside instruments, equipment, models, paintings and archival material, which trace the history of surgery from ancient times to today’s robot-assisted operations.
“To reimagine 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,” said Roger Mann, founder and director of Casson Mann.
The skeleton of Charles Byrne – a 7ft 7in man known as the Irish Giant – is no longer on display at the Hunterian Museum.
Byrne died in 1783. It has been said that he wanted to be buried at sea to prevent his body from being taken by anatomists. Before he could be buried, Hunter intervened and paid Byrne’s friends £500 for his body.
In a recent statement, the Royal College of Surgeons said Hunter and other anatomists and surgeons “acquired many specimens in ways we would not consider ethical today” in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Ancient remains, penises and ovaries
“The Hunterian Museum has been a place where history has been made, both for good and bad,” said Dawn Kemp, director of museums and special collections at the Royal College of Surgeons. “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.”
Kemp added: “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.”
In April, the Hunterian Museum launched a new website to provide global access to one of the world’s most influential medical collections.
The new site includes digitised collections material, online exhibitions, films, talks, games and visitor information.
Images: Hunterian Museum
