Florence Nightingale central to bed art
20/04/2010
One of this country''s most valuable contributors to medicine is being represented through a number of new artefacts and installations at the museum which bears her name.
The Guardian revealed that the Florence Nightingale Museum, which is reopening next month, has been subject to a £1.4m rebuild and will unlock its doors on her birthday.
One installation in particular, done by artist Susan Stockwell, will aim to point out to visitors how the nurse lived on for another half a century after the Crimean War until 1910, spending most of her time in her bed.
Ms Stockwell took a Victorian brass bed and made a "ghostly mattress" which seems to be held down in parts by the weight of an invisible figure, with the plinth created from furled pages from books, proving that "though Nightingale was in bed, she was not inactive".
Florence was nicknamed the "Lady of the Lamp" following a report published in the Times, due to her making solitary rounds during the height of the Crimean campaign.
Posted by Michael Ewing
