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Brains: The Mind as Matter

Past
  • Free
  • Exhibition
Photograph of the Brains: The Mind as Matter gallery space with display cases and visitors walking through the space.
Brains: The Mind as Matter exhibition, Benjamin Gilbert. Source: Wellcome Collection. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).

This exhibition explored what humans have done to brains in the name of medical intervention, scientific enquiry, cultural meaning and technological change.

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.