Beggars, freaks and heroes? Museum collections and the hidden history of disability

Bringing museal silence into focus: eight ways of thinking about silence in museums

“…Other examples of revealing of 'hidden histories' can be found in work around the reinterpretation of medical collections in order to highlight the social history of people with disabilities as opposed to the more technological and medical history of the objects related to disability (crutches, wheelchairs, iron lungs etc). The landmark work in this area has been done by Sandell et al (2005;Sandell, dodd and Thomson 2010). Scholars such as Levin (2010) and Sandell and Frost (2010) have also been instrumental in shaping academic museum thinking around hidden histories of gender and sexuality.…”

The Role of Museum Education in Raising Undergraduate Pre-service Teachers’ Disability Awareness: the Case of an Exhibition by Disabled Artists in Greece

“…However, in a few cases there were also comments about "better artworks than those of people without disabilities" or disabled artists who have "transcended" their disability. The latter leads the discussion to stereotypes that this time imply the idea of the disabled as "heroic" persons (Oliver, 1990;Sandell et al, 2005). Although the activities during the educational tour were designed in order to encourage STs to challenge their perceptions towards a more realistic view of disabled artists and people, it seems that specific types of perceptions are very strong and since they are not negative, they are not conceived as prejudices or stereotypes (Dodd et al, 2010) by the STs.…”

“…Based on this assumption, the issue of "hidden histories", the degree and the way of presence or absence of the history of different people and social groupsincluding disabled peopleis an important topic of discussion within museums in terms of inclusion and equality (see, e.g., Allday, 2009;Delin, 2002;Dodd, Sandell, Jolly & Jones, 2008;Martins, Semedo, & Camacho, 2018;. The social model of disability has been the basic theoretical framework within museums not only about accessibility but also about the ways that disabled people are portrayed, presented, under-presented or mis-presented within museums" collections even if the latter happens unintentionally (see, e.g., Sandell, Delin, Dodd & Gay, 2005). Similarly, in the frame of the social model of disability, arts are not considered as a therapeutic tool but as a cultural process and product (Oliver, 1990) placing the emphasis on social, political and cultural aspects and challenging ableist discourse and ideologies (Eisenhauer, 2007).…”