What Does It Mean To Be Human? Curating Heads at UCL – Octagon Gallery, University College London

I read about What Does It Mean To Be Human? Curating Heads at UCL online and went to check it out after work; it’s a tiny exhibition, covering the walls in the Octagon space within UCL’s Wilkins Building (entrance via Gower Street).

For several decades, the preserved heads of Jeremy Bentham and Flinders Petrie – two intellectuals related to UCL – have been hidden from view. Following on from a project to extract their DNA, this exhibition asks: what does the scientific interrogation of our dead bodies tell us about how we think about ourselves?

There are four cases: one concerning the archaeologist Flinders Petrie, one on cultural views on death and commemoration, one focusing on Jeremy Bentham, and the last case focused on DNA sequencing.

It’s a rather brief exhibition, but worth glancing at if you’re in the area.

I didn’t take any pictures of the preserved heads, feeling that this would somehow be inappropriate. I did, however, walk down the corridor and take a picture of Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon. (Yes, that is his actual, preserved body; the head, however, is wax).

Bentham auto-icon