May 12, 2023
This May 12 Philly Voice article dove into examples of ongoing ethical discussions in the Museum community and beyond about displays of human remains. Pieces of the story are provided below but the entire article can be read .
In recent months, the museum's management chose to remove all of its online exhibits and videos from its YouTube channel, which has more than 113,000 subscribers. The decision was made against the backdrop of a larger debate about the display of human remains, particularly those obtained without the consent of the dead and through acts of historical injustice that originally made them available for scientific inquiry.
On Friday, the Mütter Museum addressed the status of its online content with a statement explaining that its leadership is reviewing how to best improve the overall visitor experience. The museum acknowledged that some of its supporters are unhappy with the content removal, calling it temporary and inviting people to participate in a series of upcoming discussions about how to move forward.
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Concerns about using human remains for trendy museum exhibits have cropped up in years past, including criticism of "Body Worlds," the popular traveling show that came to the Franklin Institute in the 2000s.
Although German exhibit creator Gunther von Hagens said the preserved cadavers in "Body Worlds" came only from informed American and European donors, von Hagens also received unclaimed bodies from Chinese medical schools and the former Soviet Union. Among them were the bodies of homeless people, prisoners and hospital patients. Since there was no clear paper trail from the donors to the bodies that were made anonymous during their preparations for "Body Worlds," questions have lingered about their true origins, NPR .
More recently, a similar international touring show called "Real Bodies" for displaying preserved human corpses that may have been political prisoners executed in China. Other touring exhibits like this have been due to similar suspicions as well.