First revolution for First Time Out

11 March 2011

Wellcome Collection is saying ‘goodbye’ to its Livingstone Medicine Chest and ‘hello’ to Margaret Lowenfeld’s sand tray of toys from the Science Museum, as First Time Out, the collaboration between five London institutions, makes its first object swap.

Five objects, five institutions, five interpretations. First Time Out sees the Horniman Museum, the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew), Natural History Museum, Science Museum and Wellcome Collection select one previously unseen artefact from their archives and display it for the first time. After six weeks, each object moves around to a different institution and is displayed with a new label, written by the curatorial team at its host venue. The cycle continues until each of the five objects has been displayed in each institution.

The collection of toys now on display at Wellcome Collection was devised as an analytical tool by the English child psychologist and psychotherapist Margaret Lowenfeld (1890-1973). Arranged in a sand tray, the collection features a wide selection of small wooden and metal objects and people, including jungle and farm animals, trees, trains, cars and tiny figures grouped under the heading ‘small people’. Lowenfeld was interested in questions of mental representation and encouraged children to make scenarios out of the toys. She then interpreted these scenes in terms of the inner mental pictures that they suggested and, in particular, in terms of their sensorial qualities. Lowenfeld’s work resonates with up-to-date neuroscientific research, which indicates that memories - especially traumatic ones - are often triggered by visual and other sensory stimuli.

Scientific efforts to understand mental processes (whether conscious or unconscious) have a history that stretches back at least to the 18th century. Psychology, psychiatry and psychotherapy represent three major branches of this enquiry. But much art has also attempted self-consciously to probe the workings of the mind, as with the contemporary artworks by Katharine Dowson and Chris Dorley-Brown in the Medicine Now gallery.

If you missed the Livingston’s Medicine Chest at Wellcome Collection, you can now see this at the Horniman Museum, until 17 April, when the next changeover takes place.

First Time Out offers a glimpse at the behind-the-scenes treasures cared for by Britain’s leading cultural and scientific organisations, and with each object being presented according to the specific approach and context of each institution, the revolving exhibition highlights the different modes of interpretation and display that underpin museum practices.

Find out about all the objects and where they are on display at the Wellcome Collection site.

Image: ‘World created from toys in a tray of sand’, from the collection of Margaret Lowenfeld. Image credit: The Science Museum.