Monday, September 3, 2007

Making the Cut

It took many years of working with a former curator at the Museum before he would be able to see me as an equal coworker and to trust me as a colleague. But one day, not long after he received the news he was terminally ill, he took me aside and told me how he wanted his brain to be sectioned and prepared in order to best show off the features he thought would be of greatest interest to researchers in the future. Later the same day, I was scheduled to present a talk to historians of medicine. The importance of the historical topic paled (I cannot now recall the topic) but I was not willing to share what the curator had asked me to keep confidential until after his death. History happens every monent, I guess, and I've never met more future-oriented scholars than some of those who work in museums.

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