This exhibition was held at the Royal College of Physicians London from 14 February to 8 July 2011 and has since been touring other venues, such as Shape, the University of Leicester, St Pancras Hospital, and the Thackray Museum in Leeds (27 October – 27 January 2013). Its importance stems not just from the exhibition of a ‘group of rare portraits from the 17th to the 19th centuries depicting disabled men and women of all ages and walks of life, many of whom earned a living exhibiting themselves to the public’, but from the involvement of people with disabilities in outreach sessions and in the interpretation of this exhibition. To do this the curators Bridget Telfer and Emma Shepley, working with medical historians Julie Anderson and Carole Reeves, partnered with Shape ‘a disability-led arts organisation working to improve access to culture for disabled people’.

 

Historical work on portraits of people, such as conjoined ‘Siamese’ twins Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874) or artist Richard Gibson (1615-1690), was combined with information about their agency (or lack of it) in the representation process with  contemporary responses from disabled people. The social model of disability was at the core of this exhibition and its outreach and larger questions such as how people with ‘non-normative’ bodies are represented in the media today were addressed. The participants from across the UK played an active role in having their photographic portraits taken, through clicking the shutter themselves, and these portraits formed part of the exhibition.

 

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and partners, Shape, won the Ability Media International award for this ‘challenging’ exhibition of RCP portraits.

 

This exhibition is proof that it is worth dealing with the ‘darker’ side of collections. Portraits of people with disabilities or ‘different’ bodies may have been collecting and pathologised or as a spectacle for the curious, but the learning and social outcomes of working with such images are incredibly valuable.

 

Carole Reeves, who worked on the exhibition as a medical historian alongside the participants, commented:

Historians don’t see portraits like these as a line-up of disabled people. Rather, we look behind the scenes at the societies and cultures in which these individuals lived and worked, the contexts in which the portraits were made – often commissioned or drawn by the individuals themselves, and how their particular ‘disabilities’ were understood and explained by their contemporaries. Indeed, did Matthew Buchinger, Richard Gibson, and Chang the Chinese giant – all employed, talented, and with family lives – consider themselves disabled in the modern sense? Working with the focus groups we came to the realization that whilst there may have been some exploitation going on, particularly with regard to the display of children with unusual bodies, most individuals had agency over their lives and were celebrated as ‘special’ or ‘wondrous’ in their own time. They had status.

We were particularly amazed at how individuals with (to us) quite severe disabilities travelled around the world at periods when travel for anyone was difficult and hazardous. While the majority of people in Britain and Europe spent their entire lives in their home villages, the Colloredo Brothers, Chang and Eng Bunker, and Wybrand Lolkes were crossing continents on a regular basis. These portraits remind us that whilst we should never be complacent about disability, we can gain a more nuanced glimpse into disabled people’s lives and life experiences in different times and places.

 

More on the exhibition >>