Exhibiting health and difference at Henry Wellcome’s Historical Medical Museum: Disability art history

The Wellcome Collection in central London exhibits historical representations of
disability with regularity. Beginning with the opening of Henry Wellcome’s His-
torical Medical Museum in 1913, disability has been highly visible albeit framed
through the institution’s own changing definitions of what ‹the medical› itself
encompasses.1 Medical collections invite important consideration of how the co-
dependency of medicalization and ableism can be acknowledged in the legacies
of exhibition practice more broadly.2 Wellcome Collection aids in untangling how
exhibiting histories of bio-medical innovation, rehabilitation, and cultures of health
hold different implications. The manner in which disability is represented carries
authority in the museum space for how we conceive of a historical past for physical
and cognitive difference, be it through the medical model prevailing in much of
the 20th century, or more recent social and cultural models of disability. Exploring
the shifting attitudes towards physical difference at Henry Wellcome’s Historical
Medical Museum, and within Wellcome Collection’s current aspirations, may aid in
identifying potential strategies for exhibiting art against ableism.