Museum faces accusations of ‘cultural vandalism’ to close ‘racist, sexist and ableist’ medicine exhibit

A prominent London museum is closing a long-standing exhibition dedicated to the history of medicine because of its alleged “racist, sexist and ableist theories and language”.

The Wellcome Collection is ending its “Medicine Man” exhibition after 15 years in what the museum called “a major turning point,” according to The Guardian.

The Wellcome Collection was founded when Sir Henry Wellcome, an American pharmaceutical entrepreneur who died in 1936, donated more than 1 million objects to the museum, many of which were related to the history of world medicine .

Some of the objects have recently proven controversial, such as a 1916 painting titled “A Medical Missionary Attending a Sick African,” which depicts a white missionary tending to a sick African while Jesus Christ stands on the missionary’s shoulder.

The painting was eventually removed and stored for allegedly “perpetuating racial stereotypes and hierarchies.”

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The Livingstone Medicine Chest from 1900 to 1910 from the Wellcome Collection is shown on January 19, 2011 in London.
(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

“We cannot change our past. But we can work towards a future where we give voice to the narratives and lived experiences of those who have been silenced, erased and ignored,” the museum said in a Twitter thread last week.

“We tried to do this with some of the Medicine Man pieces using artist interventions. But the show still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language.”

The thread went on to claim that the extensive collection of paintings, books and anatomical models in wood, wax and ivory dating back to the 17th century tell the story of a man of “enormous wealth, power and privilege”.

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“The result was a collection that told a global story of health and medicine in which people with disabilities, blacks, indigenous peoples, and people of color were exoticized, marginalized, and exploited, or even lost. at all,” the museum wrote.

Some on Twitter criticized the museum for closing the permanent exhibit that was free to the public.

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“An act of cultural vandalism to close with no idea what will take its place,” tweeted one user.

“Is there no one who can get rid of these cultural vandals or is the rot reaching the top? Is this the prelude to the closing of entire museums because their collections are not awakened enough?” another user wrote.

Sir Henry Wellcome, who was born in 1853 in a log cabin on the Wisconsin frontier, became a pharmaceutical entrepreneur with a passion for collecting medical artifacts.
(Library of Congress)

A new exhibit detailing the health-related stories of historically marginalized communities will launch in the coming years, according to the museum’s website.

In 2019, the museum brought in a new director, Melanie Keen, who expressed a desire to determine who the rightful owners of the museum’s objects were and how Wellcome came to obtain them, The Guardian reported.

Skulls and skull-shaped vessels are displayed at the ‘Death: A Self-portrait’ exhibition at the Wellcome Collection on November 14, 2012 in London.
(Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

“It seems like an impossible place to care about this material that we have without questioning what it is, what narratives are there to be understood in a deeper way, and how the material came to be in our collection,” he said. Keen.

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The museum did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.