Wellcome Collection29 June 2007 |
This year is the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Wellcome Building on London's Euston Road. Of fairly standard neoclassical design, it is, in experts' eyes, of little architectural merit. But the outside of a building is generally less significant than what goes on inside. And the new contents of the Wellcome Building will be of great interest to a large number of people.
Over the past couple of years, architects, interior designers, exhibition designers, builders and many others have been working to realise our vision of a new and unique public venue: Wellcome Collection.
It brings together a range of activities that we have successfully organised in the past. Our exhibition programme at the Science Museum was a great success, and the fascinating Medicine Man show at the British Museum, based on the extraordinary materials collected by Henry Wellcome, was similarly popular. Wellcome Collection will continue this innovative and varied strand of work, with temporary and permanent galleries, as well as a revamped Medicine Man exhibition. It is unlikely that any other venue anywhere in the world features the range of artistic, historical, medical and scientific material that will be on show in Wellcome Collection - a feast for the eyes and for the brain.
The exhibitions will undoubtedly be a major draw to the new venue, but it has much else to offer. Over the past year we have been holding public meetings on a range of stimulating topics, from health and happiness to music and the mind. A creatively designed meeting space inside Wellcome Collection will host more of these popular events.
The development of Wellcome Collection has also given us an opportunity to enhance the space occupied by the Wellcome Library, one of the leading centres of its type in the world. The Wellcome Library contains much fascinating material of appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the human condition, and in particular in health and medicine from early days to the present, in a global context. A new 'Virtual Library' in Wellcome Collection will provide visitors with touchscreen access to hundreds of the Wellcome Library's holdings.
Complementing the Library, the building also houses the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London. Wellcome Collection will thus be a major focus for academic study of the history of medicine.
Wellcome Collection is an experiment. Nothing like it has been done before. We hope it plays its part in contributing to a society in which science is recognised as part of our cultural heritage. More immediately, though, we hope it is an enjoyable and stimulating experience for our visitors.
Mark Walport
Director of the Wellcome Trust