An exhibition presented by the University of Portsmouth, UK and the The Brain Observatory, San Diego
Dr Marius Kwint, Reader in Visual Culture, writes about curating a small exhibition of brain-themed artworks for the opening of The Brain Observatory in the historic Electra Building in San Diego.
The Health & Wellbeing Travel Award supported my accommodation expenses in San Diego in March when, during the Consolidation Week break in teaching, I took a trip to conclude and courier home artworks from the exhibition 'Imagining the Brain' that I had curated at The Brain Observatory there. The Brain Observatory is a unique combination of a museum and public-facing brain anatomy laboratory in downtown San Diego. It was founded by Dr Jacopo Annese, who is known for mapping the post-mortem brain donated by HM, a famous amnesic patient who was unable to form new memories following neurosurgery for epilepsy in the 1950s. On the strength of my previous curating of the record-breaking Wellcome Collection exhibition, Brains: the Mind as Matter, in London in 2012 and the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester in 2013, Dr Annese invited me to curate a small exhibition of brain-themed artworks for the opening of his new premises, the former University of San Diego downtown gallery, in the city’s historic Electra Building.
We selected six artists from the UK, Australia, Spain and the US who had pioneered interdisciplinary work with neuroscience (one of them with a PhD in neuroanatomy): Susan Aldworth, Andrew Carnie, Annie Cattrell, Suki Chan, Pablo Garcia Lopez and Nina Sellars. The works they contributed, and the ideas behind them, are represented here. A key criterion for selection of the artworks, apart from engaging with the imagery of the brain, was their portability in my suitcase, since using art shippers was unaffordable for a small non-profit. With only a few hired helpers and volunteers, and with me suffering jet lag, we had only four days to turn a jumble of long-stored scientific equipment and brain specimens into a safe laboratory for the public, to write and print the exhibition texts, and to install the artworks. Jacopo had to learn to operate a hired scissor lift to fix the lighting, on which he was still working at 5 o’clock on the morning of the launch on 12th November, with the doors to the public due to open in five hours.
The launch was timed to coincide with the 30,000-strong Society for Neuroscience annual conference (the first in-person since the pandemic) in San Diego’s vast convention centre. As part of their collateral programme, we welcomed over a hundred visitors, many of them enthusiastic graduate students, into The Brain Observatory over the opening weekend to discuss the interaction of art and culture with neuroscience. A highlight was the activities of Northwest Noggin, a remarkable neuroscience public engagement group who had driven down from Portland, Oregon, with anatomical specimens to run a sidewalk creative session involving hands-on ‘brain wrangling’, in their words. Preparation for that had involved me running around San Diego to find printing inks at $23 a jar, which I could have bought for £3.95 in the CCI Faculty Art Shop, had I known.
Left to right: Dr Leigh Wilson (King's College London), Dr Jacopo Annese (The Brain Observatory), Dr Marius Kwint (University of Portsmouth), Dr Richard Wingate (King's College London).
On my concluding visit in March, I was also able to co-organise and participate in an open house event, when we welcomed over 30 guests, many of them residents of the building in which the Observatory was situated. We gave gallery and laboratory talks and discussed the artworks in depth together. The Brain Observatory attracted local media attention and about a thousand visitors in the wake of San Diego’s Museum Month in February. The exhibition Imagining the Brain helped to mark it out among strong competition from the impressive array of established museums in the city, including some of the US’ most visited attractions.
Jacopo and I were also able to hold a meeting with Visual and Performing Arts San Diego on planning a major grant application to develop mental health-related arts programmes. We gave a talk to a group of undergraduate students in science engagement too. The Brain Observatory has already received grant funding to run a brain-and-mind-themed summer camp for school-age students there this year.
I also began planning a further programme of exhibitions with Jacopo, including one of the artists shown in the present show, Winchester-based Andrew Carnie. I am grateful to the Health and Wellbeing Travel Award for helping me to develop my curatorial research practice towards a further REF Impact Case Study, hopefully building upon the highly graded one I submitted to REF 2021, entitled Brains to Biennale: Bridging Art and Science to Build Audiences and Develop Artists.
A silent slide show of the exhibition and its preparations can be seen online.
