Pusey, a talented and enthusiastic guide, provides the backstory to Coram’s project. Coram, a man with a history of supporting good causes, is shocked by seeing the multitude of abandoned children on his visits to London. Parents who are unable to care for their (mostly out-of-wedlock) babies have few options; as many as a thousand of these children a year are left in the streets. While other European cities have well-established institutions supported by the Catholic Church, many Londoners initially believe that caring for them is tantamount to condoning sin and debauchery. In 1737 Coram petitions the King to support the construction of a “hospital” (not in the contemporary sense of the term, but more like an orphanage). His persistence finally pays off, and he even manages to turn his idea into a fashionable cause that receives the support of London society.  

Something that is unique about the Foundling Hospital is that Coram also allies from the start with many of the leading artists of the day. These include artist William Hogarth and composer George Frideric Handel. Hogarth, motivated perhaps by his own impoverished background, becomes a Governor of the Hospital and is active to the extent that he and his wife even foster several foundlings. He executes a portrait of Coram which he donates, and encourages other artists to do the same, so that in due course “the hospital [becomes] England’s first public art gallery and establishe[s] itself as a ‘destination venue’ for fashionable Londoners” (Foundling Museum: An Illustrated Guide, p. 16).  

Because I am a classical music fanatic, I cannot wait to see the famous Handel scores and artifacts that the museum is known for. There is a precedent for a composer to ally himself with a charity; Antonio Vivaldi’s career is deeply linked to Venice’s Ospedale della Pietà, a convent, orphanage, and music school. Handel becomes involved when he is invited to conduct a benefit concert in 1749 to raise funds for the completion of the Hospital chapel. For the occasion, he composes the Foundling Hospital Anthem, which proves to be his last piece of English church music. The text, adapted from Psalm 41 and the Book of Job, begins “Blessed are they that considereth the poor and needy: the Lord will deliver them in time of trouble, the Lord preserve them and comfort them. They deliver the poor that crieth, the fatherless and him that hath none to help him. The Lord will comfort them.” Since Handel is the most famous composer in England, his name ensures there will be a capacity crowd paying high prices for tickets. The following year, Handel conducts a benefit concert of his Messiah in the chapel. The event is so successful that Handel is made a Governor, and performances of Messiah become annual events. When Handel dies, he bequeaths orchestral parts for Messiah to the Hospital in his will so that the tradition can continue. Handel’s will is now on display in the top floor of the Museum. During the London Blitz, the precious document was removed by the curator’s wife who put it in her purse and left the building. When she returned, the room holding the will had been destroyed by a bomb.   

An equally impactful group of artifacts is on display on the first floor of the Museum, along with the following description:

The Foundling Hospital was relocated outside of the city in the 1920s. The earlier site was eventually turned into a children’s playground called Coram’s Fields. Gradually, as Britain moved away from the institutionalization of children and towards adoption and foster care, the Hospital closed. The Museum occupies a building in the same neighborhood as the 18th-century original and incorporates some of its interiors and architectural details. The magnificent Court Room, where the Governors conducted their business, is one of the best surviving Rococo interiors in the city.  

The spirit of the Foundling Hospital endures in the charity now known as Coram, one of the foremost voluntary adoption agencies in the UK. The Hospital’s tradition of receiving support from artists also continues. The Museum’s temporary exhibitions and commissions provide a space for contemporary artists to “enter into a dialogue with their eighteenth and nineteenth-century forebears” (ibid, p.81). Lastly, the establishment of Foundling Fellowships named after Coram, Hogarth and Handel (the recipients of which have included such illustrious artists as Julian Lloyd Webber and Emma Kirkby) ensures that the legacy of the institution will live on.  

References: 
https://medicalmuseums.org
This site contains a wealth of information about London’s medical museums, including the Foundling Museum, as well as information about Richard Pusey’s medical history tours.

From the closest bus stop, the shift in focus is immediately apparent. A walk along the Avenue de la Paix (Peace) takes one past sculptor Daniel Berset’s monumental broken chair statue, conceived to encourage a multi-national ban on anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions. In the background, stands the European headquarters of the United Nations in the beautiful Palais des Nations (originally built in 1929 to house the League of Nations). A bit farther on, a statue of Gandhi greets passers-by, adorned one recent day with tributes to the late Russian political activist and prisoner, Alexei Navalny.  

The Red Cross/Red Crescent museum itself sits at the foot of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters, a large white building atop a hill. A modern glass and steel structure houses the collection where visitors are invited to learn more about the organization’s origins, as well as the long-standing alliance between individual Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies that provide humanitarian relief around the world. 

While the organization of exhibits in the museum’s permanent collection is not strictly chronological, a sculptor’s dramatic all-white rendering of Henri Dunant seated at a desk—and accompanying text—explains the Geneva resident’s role in the founding in 1863 of what is now the International Red Cross. Dunant, who was first inspired to create a relief effort to alleviate the suffering of soldiers after witnessing the 1859 battle of Solferino, Italy, also participated in the framing of the original Geneva Convention of 1864. On display in a nearby case, copies of that document contain language that reflects the authors’ optimism, “Ambulances and military hospitals shall be recognized as neutral…Wounded or sick combatants, to whatever nation they may belong, shall be collected and cared for.” Subsequent versions that expanded on the protections outlined—thereafter referred to as the Geneva Conventions—were drafted respectively in 1906, 1929, and 1949, with the lattermost document still remaining in effect.  

To safeguard both those providing care and wounded soldiers, the Convention “established a universally protective symbol: a red cross on a white background.” (There has been some debate about whether the white cross on the emblem was intended to carry religious significance or was simply chosen as a readily recognizable symbol, i.e., the inverse of the Swiss flag.) A little more than a decade later, use of the red crescent—a symbol more readily recognizable to Muslim soldiers—was initiated, with formal adoption of this symbol in 1929. Today, the red crystal emblem is used by allied societies in regions where the population does not identify with the cross or the crescent.  

Throughout the museum, the response of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent to humanitarian crises around the world is documented through a variety of materials including photographs, artifacts, and facsimiles of official records. The experiences of survivors in more recent conflicts and natural disasters are brought to life through additional media, including music, graphic representation, and recorded testimony. A striking example is found in the Hall of Witnesses where visitors can sit face-to-face with greater-than-life-size videos of survivors describing their experiences—among them, a former child soldier, a civilian who lost his legs but now works with other amputees, and a woman who experienced multiple displacements from her home country. 

The youngest victims of conflict come into focus in a haunting display of photographs posted along the wall of a nearby room; the accompanying text explains that the children portrayed are survivors of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. Separated from their relatives at such an early age many did not know their family identities, or even their own names, making reunification difficult and sometimes impossible.  

Fortunately, there is hope to be found as well. In the Restoring Family Links section of the museum, more testimony may be viewed and heard, describing instances in which families separated by conflict have been reunited by the Red Cross and Red Crescent. Stories of recovery and resilience, even among individuals who might have given in to despair, amaze and inspire. 

In another gallery, a display of artwork crafted by prisoners and made primarily from found materials serves as testament to the desire for creative expression among those who have yet to attain their freedom. Among these works: a locomotive made by a French prisoner in Germany in 1941; a set of playing cards drawn by a Moroccan prisoner held by the Polisario Front (a group seeking independence in the Western Sahara) in 1998; and a miniature palace put together by Lebanese prisoners in Israel in 1999. (A book of this artwork is available in the museum shop.) 

With not all threats to human dignity stemming from civil wars, nationalist movements, repressive governments and militia, the Red Cross and Red Crescent also work to prepare vulnerable populations for natural disasters. A small area of the museum is devoted to this work, while a newer threat, cybersecurity is addressed at the Data Detox bar, where a pick-and-choose your own cocktail metaphor is used to provide “…steps you can take to control your digital privacy, security, and wellbeing”; cards that summarize this information are available to take home. 

Leaving the exhibits behind, in the lobby of the museum, the departing visitor is reminded of the power of literature and art to communicate our moral obligation to alleviate human suffering, as well as our capacity to do so. A quote from Dostoevsky that runs along one wall recalls our universal responsibility to one another, while nearby, observers are invited to add their own bit of weaving to artist Zahrasadit Hakim’s tapestry-in-progress, an example of how the cumulative efforts of many changes, supports and enhances the whole. 

The Museum of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent
https://redcrossmuseum.ch/
Av. de la Paix 17, 1202 Genève, Switzerland.  

Photo of the Red Cross/Red Crescent museum from wikicommons

Unni–Dr Unnikrishnan Pulikkal–was my classmate and dorm-mate during the medical course. He had a keen interest in the arts right from his student days during MBBS, our undergraduate medical course, and was a wonderful painter. He told me about his switch to photography, though he continued to paint and make sculptures and other artistic creations. And In addition to creating art, he has created venues to display art; Unni, who hails from Kodakara in Thrissur district of the southern Indian state of Kerala, has started two museums in his hometown, in close proximity to the town’s hospital.  

The Art Museum of Love is one of the few museums in the world devoted to representations of love in art. When I said I wanted to visit, Unni gave me precise directions about reaching the place; it is located at the Azhakam service road about a kilometer from Kodakara town. The early December afternoon was hot. The climate has become warmer over the last three decades; temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius are now common during the summer. Climate change has hit Kerala hard.  

The art museum is delightfully air conditioned. I interacted with the two ladies managing the reception desk who told me that before I went in, I had to take off my shoes. I liked the design of the museum. Plenty of planning and thought had gone into the layout and the display rooms. The rooms are small and provide you with an intimate experience; the lighting is superb and highlights the exhibits. There are also spaces to sit and relax. You can read and reflect. The display boards provide detailed information about the exhibits, which were tastefully designed.  

Various types of love are addressed. Most of us are very familiar with romantic love. The love of a family, love between siblings and love between parents and their children and love of an extended family and society are also explored. Spiritual love is common in the Indian tradition. I could see a few of Unni’s paintings and photographs on display. Other art forms were also included in the exhibit. There were river stones sculpted by nature and others carved by skilled human hands on display. The driftwood sculptures fascinated me; in Nepal, I had a good friend, Dr Awate, who was fond of collecting driftwood as he hiked the hills of western Nepal. He mentioned that with some tender loving care some of these can become works of art.  

Ancient India had a liberal approach to romance and love. Traditional paintings had strict rules and regulations. Within these boundaries you were free to explore your creativity. Depictions of the Hindu God Krishna were prominent in the museum. Different traditional art forms from South Asia depicting Lord Krishna were on display. Artists consecrated their work to the lord, and Lord Krishna has been depicted in art forms and styles of painting throughout India. The diversity of these art forms makes them an interesting area of study. Tanjore paintings from Tamil Nadu are renowned for their rich colours and extensive use of gold foil. These have more detailed and regal patterns. Madhubani paintings from North Bihar (the Mithila region) use earthy colours and are usually done in geometric patterns with bold outlines (I was gifted a Mithila painting by Darbhanga Medical College in Bihar, India; the painting still hangs in my old office in Nepal). Rajput paintings are known for their opulent colour.  

Pattachitra is a vibrant art form that originates from the holy place of Jagannath Puri, Odisha, in eastern India. It is also extensively practised in West Bengal. Traditional Warli paintings– the Warlis are a tribe in Maharashtra near the border with Gujarat–of Lord Krishna were also on display as were Gond paintings of love.. Looking at these paintings I was struck by the cultural unity within diversity in India.  

The art museum has two floors and also has a section on erotic art that has a warning about the explicit nature of the material on display at the entrance door. Till today the public has been very accepting of this section of the museum. The museum also has a community space at the side where events can be organized. Several events have used this space; for example, the museum held a competition for letters and poems expressing love to be sent to the museum’s postal address, and some of the winning entries were on display. The Art Museum of Love has created Instagrammable objects and locations for selfies and social media postings. The website of the museum (Sneha Museum in Malayalam, the native language of the southern Indian state of Kerala) is https://lovemuseum.life/. The museum is also on various social media. 

I went with Unni to another museum he curates and manages. Photomuse is the museum of photography. Photomuse was inaugurated by Herbert Ascherman Jr., a renowned US photographer who mainly works in black and white and the rare art of platinum photography. He is the mentor and guide of Dr Unni and has contributed several pieces of his work to the Art Museum of Love and to Photomuse. This museum was in operation at a different location for a few years and in early 2024 shifted to a permanent location at Mattathur near Kodakara. The website of the museum, which has multiple features and offerings (including collections mainly devoted to cameras and photo equipment, a journal, programs, and a gallery showcasing various exhibitions previously mounted at the museum, among others), is https://photomuse.in/. During my visit the first gallery was hosting an exhibition titled “Silence & Chaos.” The exhibition had photographs by different photographers, some depicting silence and others depicting chaos. The major gallery hosts cameras and photographic equipment from various generations and time periods. The old pin hole camera, bellows camera, the auto focus film cameras, polaroid camera and SLRs using film are all on display. Each camera has a small descriptive note providing more information about the object. The pride of the collection is the large format Vageshwari cameras that were manufactured in India and were among the best field cameras in the world. My friend Sanjay Mhatre, an architect, had introduced me to large format cameras and these always fascinated me. The extensive collection is also documented online at https://photomuse.in/index.php/collections 

The museum holds exhibitions of photo collections periodically and these can also be accessed online. Photomuse has a good collection of old photographs; the museum has 1,765 antique prints in its collection. There are a few depicting the birth of independent India. I was intrigued by the photo of the old Cochin Forest tramways, which operated from 1907 to 1963 and enabled the transport of wood from the Parambikulam forest to Chalakudy town. The museum also publishes a journal both in print and online at http://journal.photomuse.in/  

The small town of Kodakara near the Thrissur-Ernakulam highway has two museums that are cultural icons and social gathering places. Dr Unni also has created an open-air art gallery on the premises of the hospital he runs in the same location. Unni, through his arts initiatives, reminds us of the close connection between art and medicine. There are several educational institutions around Thrissur and health students can learn about the close interplay between art and medicine at the museum. These museums and galleries have put Kodakara on the international arts map. So, the next time you visit Kerala, which some have called God’s own country, please do plan a trip to Kodakara. The place is not difficult to reach. The museums are open from 10 am to 6 pm Tuesday to Sunday (closed Mondays). In an increasingly bitter and divisive world, come discover the gentle and healing power of the arts and of love!  

Interview with the Uber-Talented Unnikrishnan Pulikkal, MD

Ravi Shankar Aug 6, 2024

Dr. Unni, a medical practitioner and artist, discussed his rural upbringing, passion for painting and photography, founding PhotoMuse, and balancing art with medicine.

This is my third trip to Naggalama.

In the summer of 2016, I flew to Entebbe with the doctors to direct a documentary about the US-Ugandan palliative care team. I wanted to explore how the Americans fared in a place lacking the diagnostic tools and tests they depend on in the US, and whether people in the villages, many of whom rely on traditional healers, were receptive to their care. 

Access to healthcare remains a major problem in these areas. The people visited by the team are often in the advanced stages of their disease and need the liquid morphine provided by the government to ease their pain and suffering. Many of the villagers we visited had no idea of their diagnosis and what they could expect as their condition progressed.  

With the footage from earlier trips, we created a video about cancer and what to expect when diagnosed. The video will be shown on mobile phones by Village Health workers to the people they visit in their districts. The purpose of this trip was to produce translated versions of the program.    

There are more than 40 languages spoken in Uganda. English, an official language of the country, and Luganda are the most widely spoken, but to reach a broader audience, including the rural population, we to produce other versions. On this trip, we spent a week in Kampala at Stone Age Pictures filming in Kiswahili, French, sign language and Luo, a language mostly spoken in northern Uganda. The plan is to record more versions once these are successfully piloted.

Ali Musoke is the head of Stone Age Pictures in Kampala and was the Director of Photography on my documentary film, Oli Otya? Life & Lost in Rural Uganda, in 2017. Travel to and from Stone Age from our guest house averaged 20 minutes door to door. We drove alongside women and men carrying all sorts of items balanced on their heads even an open suitcase displaying pieces of jewelry.   We passed roadside markets and goats nibbling grass on the side of the road. Traffic was heavier than I remember with government and army vehicles speeding down the middle of the road. Public transportation is either by boda boda motorcycles or buses, really no bigger than vans, that stop along the roads to pick up and drop off passengers. There were so many boda bodas to dodge,  at times I felt I was an avatar in a video game, dodging incoming traffic.   

Ali, his crew and I worked in the studio for six days. Together we directed and edited the new versions. To avoid having to re-edit the video for each language, on-camera actors- two nurses and three professional actors- had to read to time while watching the finely cut scenes in the video. For example, in the section about how cancer is diagnosed, we show techs examining scans then processing a blood sample, The translations of the scripts were handled by a professional translation service in Kampala. Because the translated versions were uniformly longer than the English one, we had the translators on the set to make any last-minute adjustments to the text and to ensure that the reading was accurate. Cultural differences quickly surfaced. For example, biopsy is not a commonly used word, and it was necessary to use a description of the procedure. Similarly, the phrase “palliative care” is not widely known, and not simple to translate. We used the English phrase but showed the team in the field talking to a patient and delivering medicine. Images played a key role throughout the video. For the sign language version, we split the screen evenly between the program and the accompanying signing so that people viewing the video on their mobile phones would be able to see the woman signing. 

Once we finished the studio work, we set out for Naggalama to meet up with the team at St. Francis hospital and head out to the villages to visit women who have breast cancer. The next project is a video to help destigmatize a breast cancer diagnosis.

As I drove with my crew along the red dirt, rough, and deeply rutted roads to the women’s homes, I couldn’t imagine how women in this area could cope with breast cancer, that is if they were able to be evaluated once they suspected they had an abnormality. Village Health Workers play a key role in connecting women to health centers. But evaluation and treatment is costly and require many trips to the Uganda Cancer Center in Kampala, a trip that can take two hours or more.   

In this area, many people rely on traditional healers. Szozzi, our soundperson, grew up in one of the villages we drove through, and we stopped to say a quick hello to his family. He told me that the healers have a placebo effect, using talk to soothe their patients even when the herbs they offer have little effect on their physical illness. Sometimes, Szozzi said, people lack the language to express how they feel at vulnerable points in their lives. How a question is asked can make all the difference. And sometimes, they believe that by giving voice to what they feel can make the illness worse.

On this morning in Naggalama, we pack our bags and prepare for the trip in the hospital van to the Entebbe airport. The doctors and I take a final walk around the hospital grounds. Much is unchanged since my last visit. The hospital now offers CAT scans, and there is a new building with private rooms.  We drop in on the maternity ward to say goodbye to Immy, a nurse and the spiritual leader of the palliative care team, who is caring for her new granddaughter born at the hospital the day we arrived.  

I leave with mixed feelings, overwhelmed by the needs of the population and grateful for the dedication of the health care workers. I will miss you, Naggalama.

For readers interested in the art of translation, I recommend Is That a Fish in Your Ear, Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos