Exploring Blind spot: An exhibition and collaborative project on vision and perception
Do we see with our eyes or through them? Does the eye own or need a mind to see with? These questions, which have challenged researchers and artists for centuries, stand in the center of the exhibition Blind spot (24 May 2019 – 1 March 2020) at the National Medical Museum in Oslo. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Norwegian Theatre Academy at Østfold University College and brings together artistic installations and eye-related medical artifacts from diverse periods. Blind spot invites the visitors to explore and reflect on what it is to see. The exhibition zooms in and out from the physiological perspective, to the psychological and the cultural to examine the blind spot’s concrete and metaphorical meanings.
In this paper, I will present and discuss the exhibition, its development process, and the visitors’ first responses. My aim is to reflect on the challenges and opportunities that collaborative projects hold for museum professionals. The focus will be on: a) the interaction between artist-led and historical interpretation of museum objects, b) the understanding of museum exhibitions as experiences that affect and engage visitors intellectually, emotionally, and bodily.
Ageliki Lefkaditou is a senior curator of the History of Medicine at the National Medical Museum/ The Norwegian Museum for Science and Technology. Her research interests include the history of human and biomedical sciences, and the development of museum theory, methods, and practices. She has recently written on the history of physical anthropology, race, and racism from the late nineteenth century to the present. Lefkaditou has co-curated the exhibitions FOLK – From racial types to DNA sequences (2018 – 2019), and Blind spot (2019 – 2020).