London’s Wellcome Collection Explores Notion of Beauty With New Exhibition
LONDON — Wellcome Collection, a museum and library located on Euston Road and owned by the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline via Wellcome Trust, will host the exhibition “The Cult of Beauty” with an aim to examine the influence of morality, status, health, age, race and gender on the evolution of ideas about beauty through history.
Running from Oct. 26 to April 28, 2024, the admission-free show will feature more than 200 objects and artwork sourced from new commissions, contemporary artworks, and historical and modern materials, and presented under three themes: the ideals of beauty, the industry of beauty and subverting beauty.
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The first part of the show will lay out the beliefs that have shaped the pursuit of unattainable beauty in society across time and cultures with historical objects such as corsets from the 18th century, an Egyptian mirror from 800 to 100 BC, a powder compact designed by Salvador Dalí from the ’50s, and beauty products by Lisa Eldridge and Rihanna’s Fenty on display.
The part will also include a new commission, “An Algorithmic Gaze II,” by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm. Created as an invitation to meditate on the changing human form, the work features an AI-generated, endlessly morphing human form created from a wide range of datasets of bodies.
In a section dedicated to hair, a film by hairstylist and the British Fashion Council’s Changemaker Prize recipient Cyndia Harvey will form a group display along with “Hairstyles,” a series of photographs celebrating cultural traditions in Nigeria captured by J.D. Okhai Ojeikere, and Jennifer Ling Datchuk’s “We Climb,” which shines a light on the cultural significance of hair and the strength and support within the Asian American Pacific Islander community.
The “Industry of Beauty” chapter will explore the relationship between medicine and cosmetics, while tracing a history of product innovation, revealing how the industry has influenced the relationship with the body and self-image.
This part comes with a new installation by Makeupbrutalism, a conceptual art project made by the London-based artist Eszter Magyar. It aims to question how beauty has been instrumentalized as monetary and cultural currencies.
The impact of beauty pageants and cosmetic surgery is also being highlighted with an interdisciplinary project of photography, sculpture and installation based on collections at Wellcome, titled “The Disobedient Nose,” by Sarabande resident artist Shirin Fathi.
The subverting beauty section aims to “question what beauty means in society today and how it can be used as a tool to subvert social constructs.” It will showcase commissions including a digital installation by Xcessive Aesthetics, exploring the opportunities nightclub bathrooms can offer as platforms for experimentation and community-building, as well as a film and sculptural work by Narcissister, which will consider the weight of beauty ideals within mixed-race mother-daughter relationships.
Other highlights in this part of the exhibition will include the film installation “Permissible Beauty” by singer-songwriter and art historian David McAlmont, photographer Robert Taylor and filmmaker Mark Thomas. The show will also highlight the importance of Black queer visibility through new portraits of six Black queer Britons.
Founded in 1936 to manage the wealth of pharmaceutical tycoon Henry Wellcome after his death, the Wellcome Trust now holds a 37.8 billion pound investment portfolio in areas such as discovery research, climate and health, infectious disease and mental health. Wellcome Collection, founded in 2007, serves as an educational arm of the Trust to challenge how the public thinks and feels about health.
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