Funded via a foundation established by nineteenth-century Big Pharma businessman Henry Wellcome, the Wellcome Collection’s exhibitions are all linked to health and well-being in one way or another. Mr. Wellcome was also a collector, and his legacy includes a museum-sized archive of literature, imagery and objects related to social and medical health. The Wellcome Collection’s curators are given access to the archive and can choose bits and bobs to complement each exhibition’s themes. It’s not as dull as it sounds. The museum’s 2023 exhibition, “The Cult of Beauty”, dissected attitudes toward beauty, from the origins of the male gaze to the cosmetic industry cod-scientific manipulations. Show-stopping pieces from the likes of performance artist Narcissister and activist and artist Eszter Magyar’s Makeupbrutalism project were included alongside seventeenth-century vanitas artworks conveying the emptiness of pursuing beauty.

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Next up, the Collection’s “Hard Graft: Work, Health and Rights” exhibition sets its stall out early. As visitors walk into the space, a sign tells them the exhibition explores links between underrepresented work, the people who do it and where it takes place. Okay, then. Putting together an exhibition about something as big as work was never going to be easy, and the sign explains the survey’s focus. ”Hard Graft” is divided into three sections—The Plantation, The Street and The Home—with each one containing a........

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