Dental News - University of Melbourne cartoon exhibition explores history of dentistry

Dental Tribune International

Wed. 25. May 2016

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MELBOURNE, Australia: In a new exhibition, It’s a Gas! Dentistry & Cartoons, the University of Melbourne brings dental history to life with laughter. The extensive collection of illustrations and cartoons from Europe and Australia, with supporting commentary by leading dentists and scholars, shows visitors how images and perceptions of dentistry have penetrated popular culture for centuries.

The exhibition is curated by the university’s Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum and combines collections from the museum and other public and private collectors, including the Medical History Museum, Baillieu Library Print Collection, National Gallery of Victoria and State Library Victoria. It incorporates works by internationally renowned artists, including Lucas van Leyden’s famous engraving of 1523—which is also the oldest piece showcased—as well as famous Australian cartoonists, such as Andrew Dyson and Ron Tandberg. Complementing the cartoons are photographs, ephemera and equipment that reveal turning points in dentistry.

It’s a Gas! allows visitors unique insights into human fears, beliefs and vanities and into what makes people laugh, said Dr Jacqueline Healy, Senior Curator of the Medical History Museum and the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum. “Despite dramatic advances in dental technologies, medications and treatments, all of which should help remove anxiety about a visit to the dentist, the iconography of the dentist as the suspicious tooth puller persists today,” Healy remarked.

“From sixteenth-century engravings and etchings to twenty-first-century newspaper cartoons, the images in this exhibition are pervaded by this fear of the dentist, who is the brunt of many jokes to alleviate such concern,” Prof. Mike Morgan, head of the Melbourne Dental School, stated.

The free exhibition is being held in the Medical History Museum (Level 2 of the Brownless Biomedical Library) and runs until 3 September. Opening hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.

More information can be found at medicalhistorymuseum.mdhs.unimelb.edu.au.

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