The experience of being diagnosed and living with cancer is a life-changing one that affects over 2 million people in the UK every year. Today on World Cancer Day, the Science Museum has unveiled an artwork that shines a light on the lives of people impacted by cancer in Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries entitled Silent Stories by Katharine Dowson.
Comprising five striking glass heads, each bust was cast from a plaster cast of a patient being treated for neck and throat cancer at Southend University Hospital in 2010. The plaster casts were used to create bespoke radiotherapy shell masks used to position the patient during their treatment.
For patients receiving treatment to delicate regions of the head and neck, these plaster moulds were traditionally created to produce masks that temporarily immobilised them, ensuring healthy tissue was protected while radiotherapy targeted cancer cells. This casting technique, which evokes the classical form of a portrait bust, has since been replaced in hospitals by modern mesh moulds – a testament to the rapid advancements in cancer treatment over the past two decades. Examples of the newer thermoplastic mesh masks, including one decorated with the imagery of Batman for a child undergoing radiotherapy, can also be seen on display in the galleries.
Located in the Faith, Hope and Fear gallery, the glass casts are accompanied by an audio work by Dowson commissioned by the Science Museum – an intimate soundscape of the patients’ voices woven together that charts their emotions and memories of being diagnosed and treated for cancer, and their subsequent life experiences in the 15 years after their initial treatment. The audio draws out the complex highs and lows of an individual’s experience but also emphasises that while more of us are being diagnosed with cancer, many more of us are surviving and living longer following the disease than ever before.
Image caption: Silent Stories artwork in Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries at the Science Museum © Science Museum Group
Artist and sculptor, Katharine Dowson, said: ‘The glass creates the impression of suspended time, a snapshot memory of the moment. I use glass as a metaphor for the imperfection and fragility of life; the casts incidentally capture the patients’ portrait in a moment of vulnerability – echoes of which can be heard in the soundscape. To see through the glass encourages the viewer to ask questions about a person’s inner self, intensified by the intimate soundscape, where individuals describe their thoughts and feelings of then and now.’
Katie Dabin, Keeper of Medicine at the Science Museum, said: ‘We are thrilled to display this incredibly powerful, yet intimate artwork in the Medicine galleries at the Science Museum. On one level the artwork speaks to the amazing hope and progress that’s being made in cancer care, with so many more people being successfully treated for the disease. Yet, the light and dark experiences shared by the patients in the soundscape are an important reminder of how the emotional and physical consequences of cancer and therapy can stay with us long after treatment finishes. For so long experiences of cancer have been treated with misconceptions, silence or stigma, so its hugely significant that we can give a platform to this stunning artwork and authentic lived experiences of a disease so many of us encounter.’
Silent Stories joined the Science Museum Group Collection as part of the Collecting Experiences of Cancer project launched in 2020 which focusses on enhancing the representation of the profound and common disease experience, inviting patients, medics and researchers to suggest objects to collect. Many of these items – ranging from a decorated wig stand following on from an experience of chemotherapy associated hair loss, to a 3D printed abdomen used to plan the surgery to remove a large tumour in a young girl at Alder Hey Hospital, were displayed in Cancer Revolution: Science, innovation and hope (2022), a major free exhibition on the treatment, research and understanding of cancer. The five glass casts were loaned for display in this exhibition and the soundscape was commissioned from the artist at the same time.
Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries opened in 2019 and are the largest medicine galleries in the world. Featuring three thousand objects and covering an area equivalent to 1,500 hospital beds, it marks its fifth year in 2025. The galleries feature both historic artefacts associated with cancer treatment (including a 1930s radiotherapy device known as a ‘radium bomb’ from Westminster Hospital) and contemporary objects including a breast cast of Caroline Presho, who made the cast at the age of 35 before electing to have a preventative double-mastectomy in response to a BRACA2 mutation genetic diagnosis that significantly raised her risk of developing breast and other cancers.
