The Wellcome Collection

Thursday, June 21, 2018

The Wellcome Collection was one of the more interesting galleries I have been to, including both North America and Europe. Health and medicine are the themes of this museum, with the current emphasis on teeth. This made me laugh due to the fact that my mom is a dental hygienist back home; needless to say, I sent her quite a few photos of teeth throughout the day.

Truthfully, I was not very fond of this museum due to the obscureness of it all. As we walked in through the entrance, there was a statue of a man hanging upside down from the ceiling. There may have been an underlying meaning to this statue relating to health, but just by first impression, the man looked as if he was about to suck my blood. According to the Wellcome Collection website, the sculpture’s title is Feel and was created by the artist, Anthony Gormley. Other random activities that our group participated in throughout this gallery was coloring pictures on pieces of notecards and listening to a British man tell us about Native Americans in a health and wellness museum.

One unexpected, but captivating, piece in this museum was a toothpaste advertisement that was a tooth carved in the shape of a Roman Colosseum. The advertisement was for the Chinese toothpaste company, Maxam; and the footnote of a quote on this poster is “don’t let the germs settle down.” According to this piece’s plaque, the photo is a “warning not to neglect your teeth, lest they become crumbling ruins”; also, “the striking campaign by JWT China’s Chief Creative Officer Yang Yeo and team won gold awards at the prestigious Cannes International Festival of Creativity” for this advertisement. Besides persuading people to brush their teeth, this picture proves that art can be appreciated in many different shapes and sizes; and although the tooth Colosseum was most likely a computer trick, it displays the creativity of artists and the wide range of materials art can be created from.

-Hannah L. Brown

Gormley, Anthony. “Feel by Anthony Gormley.” wellcomecollection.org.

Wellcome Collection. 2005. Web. 27 June 2018.

“Teeth.” wellcomecollection.org. Wellcome Collection. Web. 27 June 2018.