The Wellcome Collection

...is really rather good. Its very slick and stylish and modern. It's a real exemplar of novel ways to present information, and also of how to play with that information in the first place. The modern medicine room is cross-disciplinary in a really exciting way; science and art meshing together completely comfortably.

Short recorded lectures about malaria speak just to you as you sit in a chair. A gigantic plaster model of a distorted body, representing 'I can't help what I think' stands next to a graphical representation of heartbeats, a beautiful glass scuplture of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, a piece made of mosquito nets and little photos about AIDS in Africa. Glass cases hold exercise videos, diet books and other familiar artefacts of our modern obsession with size and health - emphasising the point that our own present culture can be put in a case and labelled and studied just the same as that foreignness of the past.

And the events... really innovative and interesting. See links below.

The staff are helpful, the cakes in the cafe look good, and the building - where I used to go and read and fall asleep back in my degree days - is lovely as ever. Can't wait to see the new sleep and dreaming exhibition coming soon.

The Wellcome Collection http://www.wellcomecollection.org/
Witness live heart surgery http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041264.htm
Books to make you better http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX039485.htm
An experimental and experiential insight into the materiality of flesh http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041288.htm