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Narrative Remains
Summary of Narrative Remains, a collaboration between artist and writer Karen Ingham and the Hunterian Museum funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award Project.
6 October - 5 December 2009
Hunterian Museum
All the dead voices... what do they say?
Narrative Remains is a film and site-specific installation by artist Karen Ingham which shows how the stories of historical patients can be re-located and spoken anew within a contemporary context. Through some of John Hunter’s anatomical specimens, the exhibition reveals the hidden histories of patients such as Thomas Thurlow, the Bishop of Durham, and Mary Hunt, a servant - voices from the 18th century that have, over time, been lost from our hearing.
Narrative Remains follows the long tradition of narrations by the speaking dead by textually and visually reuniting patient narratives with there displayed organs. We may ask how can a heart or lungs possibly narrate a story? But a sense of humanity may be found within a single organ if we conceive that organ as a metonym, for example the throat of Marianne Harland, a young woman famed for her musical talents and the beauty of her singing voice. Her death was particularly poignant as she lost first her famed voice, and soon after her life, as a result of tuberculosis. Her oesophagus, larynx and trachea now hang suspended and forlorn and many visitors could easily pass by these seemingly modest remains without ever knowing the human story behind the display.
Narrative Remains has been funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award 
The film
The specimens
The six specimens from John Hunter's collection that are featured in the exhibition are:
The uterus of Mary Hunt, a servant (RCSHC/3590)
The liver of Margaret Johnson (RCSHC/P 1103)
The lung of Mrs Adam (RCSHC/P 190)
The rectum of Thomas Thurlow, Bishop of Durham (RCSHC/P 192)
The heart of Richard Bulstrode (RCSHC/P 286)
The throat of Marianne Harland (RCSHC/P 364)
For more information about each specimen, click on the numbers to link to our online database.
The catalogue
A 58-page colour catalogue accompanying the installation, with an introductory essay by former Hunterian Museum Director Simon Chaplin and text and images by Karen Ingham, is available to buy from the Hunterian Museum. To order a copy to be despatched by post, please email museums@rcseng.ac.uk or telephone 020 7869 6570.
Read about the throat of Marianne Harland from the catalogue (PDF document).
About the project
Karen Ingham is an artist, writer, curator and a Reader in Art and Science Interactions at the Dynevor Centre for Art, Design and Media at Swansea Metropolitan University. She has an MPhil from the University of Wales for her research into photography and the memento mori and a PhD for her investigations into creative collaborations in the anatomical theatre. 
Narrative Remains draws on Karen Ingham's extensive experience of working as a collaborative artist in anatomical domains to create a site-specific response to six key specimens within the collection. By writing a semi-fictive first person post-mortem account of their death and disembodiment, Karen re-locates, re-embodies and reunites the lost narratives with their dislocated organs - narratives presented through the display of specimens in specially made museum vitrines, layered with image and text, and a film which projects and layers the organs and their stories onto the absent, but re-visualised as present, body. The organs are thus empowered to perform their own story of corporeal demise and post-mortem preservation. Further images from the project are available on Karen's website.
Simon Chaplin was the Director of Museums and Special Collections at The Royal College of Surgeons of England. A zoologist and historian of medicine, his PhD thesis examined the 'museum oeconomy' of anatomy in Georgian London. His recent publications include 'Nature dissected, or dissection naturalized - the case of John Hunter's museum' in museums & society, 6 (2008), 135-151.
A presentation about the project was made by Karen Ingham and Simon Chaplin at DDD9, the Ninth International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal, at the University of Durham from 9-12 September 2009. Karen will be speaking about her work as one of the museum's public events on 10 November, and further presentations by Karen and Simon took place at conferences in December and January, including the British Records Association's Researching Lives symposium on 8 December 2009.
