A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Museum Doodle

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Museum Doodle

Talk about a hoppin' afternoon at the museum. The Pre-K to pre-teen crowd turned out in hordes to create Jackson Pollack-style artwork at the NMHM.

Jan Holland-Chapman, director of the DC and Montgomery Co. Abrakadoodle mobile art program, volunteered her time and resources to create an Abrakadoodle extravaganza. Expecting no more than 25 or so kids, Jan showed up for story time and a little painting with marbles and tempera paint--unbelievably about 200 people

(kids and adults) showed up and created fabulous, one-of-a-kind works of art. This event was planned to compliment "Expression of Hope" an art exhibit of paintings by and about people with lysomal storage diseases to raise awareness about these rare conditions. A big thanks goes to Jan for her generous support of this program (and to docents Regina and Delores for all their help). To learn more about Abrakadoodle and their programs for parties, events, summer camps, etc., visit www.abrakadoodle.com or email Jan at jholland-chatman@abrakadoodle.com.

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Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

A Repository for Bottled Monsters

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Sunday, February 24, 2008

Museum Doodle

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