Museuming: the things museums need to do

Abstract

Even after many years of working in museums, I still get that same sense of awe and fascination when I visit one. I have a particular fondness for the rambling cabinets of curiosities that museum used to be – so much taxidermy, and so full of arsenical dangers – but I also have an understanding they are really a relic of the past. Museums have a new role in contemporary society but should still aim to inspire that same kind of awe and fascination.

This article is an updated version of a presentation delivered at the 9th International Symposium on the History of Anaesthesia.