Captivated by Épidémies
It’s not my intention for this post to be morbid or macabre, I swear. I just didn’t expect to find an exhibit about history’s most horrific and devastating pandemics to be so incredibly fascinating.
Épidémies, a temporary exhibition, will run until February 16, 2025.
As someone who admittedly has a high level of morbid curiosity about topics like war and genocide, I was definitely excited to check out Épidémies, a current temporary exhibition at Lyon’s Musée des Confluences. I didn’t know that I would be unable to tear myself away. It was the first time in I don’t know how long, if ever, that I felt the need to devour a museum exhibit. I was compelled to read every piece of information, every plaque, watch every short film, and scrutinize each piece of art and every artifact. This is coming from someone who, while she loves museums basically taps out after two hours.
Epidemies tells the story of humanity’s relationship to widespread, devastating disease through the most major pandemics of human history: the plague, smallpox, Spanish flu, cholera and AIDS.
Covid-19 was not included. Too soon for us all, I guess, even though it kinda feels like it was forever ago. But fine. It can stay that way. However, the exhibit begins with a quote pulled from the diary of a 9-year-old Lyonnaise girl named Anna during the first lockdown in 2020, which beautifully reflects the heartbreaking loneliness, isolation and loss of this period:
“I wanted to see mummy. I wanted to be near her and hold her hand, but I couldn’t go into her room so as not to catch the disease. With my sister, we were no longer going to school or to games. The whole house was sad, the whole street was sad.”
As if telling the visitor: The horrors you are about to learn about may seem abstract, but remember, we are not untouchable.
The exhibit basically starts at the dawn of humanity—when the nomadic turned pastoral. We stopped moving around as hunter gatherers and began to stay put in one place, essentially allowing bacteria and germs to pass from one group to another.
It moves on to the Plague or Black Death, the first of which struck about 1,500 years ago and may have been a major contributor to the decline of the Roman Empire, which it weakened to a point of no return to its former greatness.
It struck again in the middle ages, leading to annihilation. It also sparked discrimination against groups who were scapegoated for its cause (women and Jews, for example). With so little known about health at this point in human history, someone obviously had to be blamed for the destruction. (Sigh, have we really learned since?)
One of the most fascinating components of the exhibit explored how, beginning with the Black Death, pandemics manifested in our collective consciousness throughout time—through religion and spiritual beliefs, art and popular culture, and how societies related to the human body. Death was ever more present, like a lingering threat that always lurked in the shadows, and life was all the more tenuous.
Le Squelette joyeux, or The Merry Skeleton, a short film by Lyon native Louis Lumiere made in 1897, represented death in cinema.
From Black Death, the exhibit moves on to Smallpox, and from there to the Spanish flu, incorporating how these events eventually led to changes like practicing hygiene, the field of microbiology, and the development of the microscope. Each devastating event left its mark, shifting humanity’s understanding of and its relation to the bacteria and viruses ever present within our midst.
Statues from Benin depicting Smallpox, circa 1880.
We also signed our 7-year-old son up for a workshop related to the exhibit. It was very well done and engaging, with a Q&A beforehand, interactive games (involving parents as well) and a visit to key parts of the exhibit that illustrated the differences between virus, bacteria and fungus. Then each family were free to make our own germs with clay and some other materials.
Our family’s microbes collection. (Mine ended up looking like a chicken.) We enjoyed the activity so much that we went home and made some DNA.
Lyon’s Musée des Confluences celebrated 10 years in 2024. While I haven’t even yet dug into the museum’s permanent exhibitions, I signed up for a one-year membership which will pay for itself after my second visit. I have no doubt I will make it worth my while.
Épidémies will remain open at the Musée des Confluences until 16 February 2025.