June 23, 2025
Leadership was interviewed by The New Yorker for a story about the review the Museum launched in 2023 and what it means for the institution’s collection. Part of the article is provided below and can be fully accessed .
The museum will now be run by [Erin] McLeary and Sara Ray, a historian of science. Both women stressed to me their love of the institution, as well as their understanding that it needed to evolve. Ray mentioned that she’d been a volunteer tour guide a decade ago. “When I came back in January, I was shadowing a docent, and I was, like, ‘Oh, my God, this docent is giving the same—literally the same—tour,’ ” she said. “For all of the talk about changes to the collection, really there’s not that much in the core gallery that has changed.” The turmoil surrounding the museum’s direction ultimately seemed to be less about major alterations to the space than about a shift in emotional tone, a movement away from celebration and toward something like penance.
McLeary and Ray see the research into the collection’s origins as a form of appreciation; what is the Mütter, after all, if not a place where people go to be disturbed? “The way this controversy has been depicted is that you either need to commit yourself to ethics or you need to commit yourself to being a place of morbid fascination,” Ray said. “We think there’s a secret third way, which is that you can actually do both of those things.”