MAGEE WOMEN'S RESEARCH INSTITUTE
The Brief:
Modern medicine knows less about nearly every aspect of women's bodies and health compared to men's. It's called the health gap and it’s a huge problem. Thing is, people don’t know about it – and MWRI wants to change that.
The Concept:
Create a museum experience around “Medicine’s Greatest Mystery.” Visitors will expect to learn about a rare, Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not-type case – only to discover that this medical mystery affects over half of the human population.
NOTE: The exhibit, unfortunately, never made it into production. The client's budget was reallocated to ... direct fundraising efforts for heart disease research. So I will not complain.
Guests enter a dark room where this message is projected onto a wall. They are then directed to walk down a long, dark hallway.
On the other end of the hallway, guests turn the corner and are confronted by what this mystery is all about.
Installation 1: Along this staircase is a timeline of medical discoveries. At the top, a statement reads “All of these studies were only tested on men. Which means this timeline only represents the progress of medical research for men’s health. Walk back down the stairs to the pink step. That’s how far behind women’s medical research is.”
Installation 2: To make it memorable, make it “Instagrammable”. In this section, participants will wear a “Miss Diagnosis” sash in front of phrases women hear all the time from doctors downplaying their symptoms. Statements like ’It’s probably stress’ is not an acceptable diagnosis. and ’That’s just part of being a woman’ should never be the prescription.
Installation 3: A series of life-size panels depicting the body’s different anatomical systems. AR technology will bring each to life, highlighting all of the ways within these systems that men’s and women’s bodies function, react, and present themselves differently.
Installation 4: Because of this lack of research into women’s health, there are so many things that we don’t know – things that you’d think scientists would be working tirelessly to figure out, but aren’t. These questions will be plastered all over the walls to overwhelm visitors with the sheer amount of what we don’t know.
ART DIRECTOR: Geoff Hoskinson
