As I have mentioned in several of my blogs, we have city excursions and museum visits built into our syllabi that correspond with our class subjects at the Foundation of International Education. In our Nursing Genetics class, we recently visited the Wellcome Trust museum, known as the Wellcome Collection.
The Wellcome Trust is a biomedical research charity, founded in 1936. It is unique, because it serves as a museum, as well as a non-profit organization that supports medicine. As the Wellcome Trust itself helps to fund biomedical research to improve medicine, the Wellcome Collection museum serves to educate the general public on science. The aim of the Wellcome Trust is to “achieve extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds.” They achieve this by funding Basically all of the museums are free in London, making them very easy to access for class!
We were able to visit two exhibitions during our time at the Wellcome Collection. The first exhibit we saw was the Medicine Man. This exhibit is permanent in the Wellcome Collection. This exhibit displays some of Henry Wellcome’s set, who is the founder of the Wellcome Trust. Displayed in the Medicine Man exhibit are old fashioned medical tools, historic artifacts, paintings, a mummy and even Napoleon Bonaparte’s toothbrush. Especially as a nursing student, it was very interesting to go to a museum dedicated to health and medicine!
The second exhibit we visited at the Wellcome Collection museum was a temporary exhibit called “Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic”. This showcased many historical artifacts used by famous magicians such as Houdini. It also demonstrated how psychology is used to preform magic tricks and create illusions.
The Wellcome Collection museum, a part of the Wellcome Trust, has been my favorite museum thus far. With a connection to medicine and biomedical research, it was extremely interesting to visit and relate to our genetics class. This museum is not only medicine based, but also showcases many unique exhibits, such as Smoke and Mirrors. Anybody looking for a fun exhibition to visit while in London would enjoy the Wellcome Collection. I will definitely be making a trip back here before my abroad experience is over, to explore the rest of the museum that I did not have the chance to during class time!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… I am so grateful that the Foundation of International Education leads us on museum tours during class! Through these visits, I have been able to visit many of London’s great museums and learn so much about the city that I love.
