Wellcome Collection

Founder Sir Henry Wellcome, a pioneering 19th-century pharmacist and entrepreneur, amassed a vast and idiosyncratic collection of implements and curios relating to the medical trade, now displayed in this swanky little new museum. In addition to these fascinating and often grisly items -delicate ivory carvings of pregnant women, used guillotine blades, Napoleon's toothbrush -the Wellcome Collection houses several serious (and sometimes disturbing) works of modern art, most of them on display in a smaller room to one side of the main chamber of curiosities. The Wellcome Collection's temporary exhibitions are usually wonderfully interesting, and in the past have tackled such subjects as sleep and dreaming, and the relationship between madness and art.