This exhibition explored what humans have done to brains in the name of medical intervention, scientific enquiry, cultural meaning and technological change.
Brains: The Mind as Matter exhibition, Benjamin Gilbert. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Featuring more than 150 artefacts – real brains, artworks, manuscripts, artefacts, videos and photography – it pursued the continuing quest to manipulate and decipher this unique and mysterious human organ, whose secrets still confound and inspire. ‘Brains’ asked not what brains do to us, but what we have done to brains – focussing on the bodily presence of the organ rather than investigating the neuroscience of the mind.