Reinventing the University Museum

UWA Historical Society Lecture

Presented by Ken Arnold, Director, Medicinsk Museion, Copenhagen, and Creative Director, Wellcome Trust

On the verge of closing forever, a number of university museums have nonetheless found a revived vigor, a new intellectual and social role. Medical Museion is one such example.

In this talk, I will briefly outline a history of university museums before unfolding our efforts to recalibrate the relevance of one particular institution in Copenhagen. To do this we have, in truth, drawn on some time-worn practices and epistemological notions: the value of old objects to generate new thinking, the importance of museum spaces as trusted gathering places for people from differing perspectives, and the enduring significance of curiosity as an approach, an attitude, towards the world we find ourselves in. This talk then sets out a short story of university museums in three episodes: the rise, the fall, and now a hoped-for rise-again in the fortunes of their ‘museum method’.

Ken Arnold is a museum director, cultural producer and researcher in the fields of public engagement and museum history. He currently works for Wellcome in London and Medical Museion, Copenhagen University.

At Wellcome, he oversees two strands of arts and cultural engagement: (1) Collaborative international programmes and (2) a research Hub based in Wellcome’s London headquarters. Both convene experimental partnerships around key strategic health challenges.

For the previous two decades he spearheaded a number of multidisciplinary initiatives, helping establish Wellcome Collection in 2007, and directing its first decade of programming.

Since 2016, he has also been Director of Medical Museion and Professor at Copenhagen University. Medical Museion is a ‘research museum’ that uses culture, the humanities and arts to reimagine the past, present and future of health and medicine.

He regularly writes and lectures on museums, as well as the contemporary intersections between arts and sciences. His book Cabinets for the Curious (Ashgate, 2006) explored England’s earliest museums. He is working on a book about the enduring role museums have to foster curiosity-led public enquiry.

Ken Arnold is a 2025 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Distinguished Visiting Fellow.