The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia looks like any other respectable establishment in the US: a trim brick building with an American flag outside.
But behind its doors lies a remarkable medical collection of the dead, diseased and disfigured that has attracted visitors and tourists for decades but is now at the center of a roiling dispute over the ethics of such exhibits in the 21st century.
In common with many other leading art institutions and museums across the US — and the rest of the world — the Mutter is plagued by questions around the provenance and rights of acquisition of its collection of the grotesque.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Earlier this year, the Mutter took down its collection from its Web site and began an audit of 35,000 objects and specimens in its archive of anomalies and oddities.
Spurred in part by a 1990 law ordering the return of Native American remains, it has set about developing new ethical guidelines for display. Though with about 50 sets of Native American remains, the Mutter’s issues are slight compared to the august institution of Harvard, which has 7,000.
ETHICS REVIEW
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The notion of an ethics review alarmed fans of the museum who feared that a new director would turn the focus of the museum from death and disease and toward health.
“A shake-up at the Mutter Museum means it could get way less weird,” worried the Philadelphia Inquirer, calling the museum “disturbingly informative” and “uniquely Philadelphian.”
From its founding in 1858 as part of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Mutter stands alongside the UK’s National Museum of Health and Medicine, the Hunterian Museum, the Surgeons Hall, UCL Pathology, Bart’s Pathology and the Vrolik Museum.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Among its collection are unusual or deformed organs, an iron lung and Einstein’s brain. There is the death cast and the conjoined liver of Chang and Eng, the original “Siamese Twins;” the body of a woman known as the “Soap Lady,” whose remains are encased in a fatty, post-death substance known as adipocere; and the skeleton of the 2.36 meter “Kentucky giant.”
But there is also the skull of Francisca Seycora, the “famous Viennese prostitute;” along with 139 crania used by Viennese anatomist Josef Hyrtl to disprove 19th-century phrenology theories that intelligence can be measured by the skull’s size and measurements.
Critics of the Mutter ethical overhaul do not dispute that some exhibits, including the Soap Lady (seemingly grave-robbed), Einstein’s brain (he wanted to be cremated) should be removed or overhauled, along with that of the New Orleans sex worker Mary Ashberry, an achondroplastic dwarf who died in childbirth along with her infant.
HUMAN FETUSES
Instead, says paleopathologist Hanna Polasky, who spent three years at the museum, the institution has also focused on human fetuses — something guaranteed to spark fierce debate in the US.
“The museum is quoted as saying they make them uncomfortable, yet we know they were donated with maternal consent,” Polasky says. “The issues that are being dealt with are not the legitimate issues, rather the perceived legitimate issues.”
The Mutter Museum executive director, Kate Quinn, said she was not personally uncomfortable with the fetuses and finds the specimens in the museum “fascinating.” But she accepts that visitors’ views are important too, especially in a changing America very different from when the collection began as a way of educating doctors.
“That’s something we need to look into,” Quinn says. “Is that who we want to be and how we want to be perceived? The world has changed so much in the past five years, and every institution, due to the pandemic and social unrest in the US, you have to ask yourself: what is the role of a museum in the world today? Why are we here, why do we exist and who are we here to serve?”
Medical specimens, Polasky points out, are different from the now-removed Ecuadorian shrunken heads in the “treatment of enemies” cabinet at Oxford’s anthropological Pitt Rivers Museum. The Mutter was created not to study other cultures, but instead to teach and advance medical science. Notions of consent, too, are comparatively recent in such a field, though many would argue they are also long overdue.
The Soap Lady, for example, was donated with fraudulent information about her cause of death or the gravesite from which she was exhumed. “The paperwork in a lot of cases does not exist,” says Polasky. “The idea of repatriation is an incredibly attractive idea, but when it comes to human remains there are a lot of legal issues around reburial.”
The issues confronting the Mutter revolve around whether museums should be answerable to scholarship or public sentiment. Quinn said the Mutter is due for review.
“Most museums change much more often, and that hasn’t happened here. It’s been set in time, and it’s healthy for any organization to do,” she said.
The ethics review, of course, will get into those issues of consent. “Who gave permission to be here and what were their expectations when they gave up their bodies?” Quinn added. “There are a lot of ethical challenges that will come from this.”
MUTTER ENTHUSIASTS
But that may not be good news for the Mutter’s ardent enthusiasts, of whom there are many, especially in Philadelphia, where the museum is often seen as a valued part of local culture.
A pressure group, Protect the Mutter, is concerned that even the iron lung, used to treat polio victims, may be at risk despite that exhibition offering a salient warning to contemporary anti-vaxxers. The displays of syphilitic organs may be useful, too, as that disease appears to be regaining a foothold.
Sam Redman, the author of Bone Rooms, a recent study of how medical museums became storehouses of human remains, has said that beyond their educational role for physicians, the institutions “helped satisfy visceral desires and macabre curiosities.” Open to the public, “medical displays subverted dominant social norms by placing bodies, body parts, or visible pathologies considered too shocking for public display into a more socially acceptable context.”
Redman believes the US is witnessing a tension that has existed within and around medical museums since their founding.
“People have always been simultaneously drawn to them and reviled by them in almost equal parts,” he says. But the addition of the Internet has made it more public that the acquisition of medical knowledge has not always been ethically clear.
Recently, the biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific reached a settlement with the family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman from Baltimore who had had cervical cancer cells taken from her and used, without consent, for research 70 years ago. The so-called HeLa cells led to numerous scientific discoveries.
But, says Redman, “when these shocking stories come forward, we’re often pushed to confront the question of where does our medical knowledge come from, how have we arrived at it, and what happens to our bodies when we die. These are pretty fundamental human questions. It’s easy to see why the Mutter museum controversy strikes a nerve.”
Taiwan doesn’t have a lot of railways, but its network has plenty of history. The government-owned entity that last year became the Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) has been operating trains since 1891. During the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, the colonial government made huge investments in rail infrastructure. The northern port city of Keelung was connected to Kaohsiung in the south. New lines appeared in Pingtung, Yilan and the Hualien-Taitung region. Railway enthusiasts exploring Taiwan will find plenty to amuse themselves. Taipei will soon gain its second rail-themed museum. Elsewhere there’s a number of endearing branch lines and rolling-stock collections, some
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), and the country’s other political groups dare not offend religious groups, says Chen Lih-ming (陳立民), founder of the Taiwan Anti-Religion Alliance (台灣反宗教者聯盟). “It’s the same in other democracies, of course, but because political struggles in Taiwan are extraordinarily fierce, you’ll see candidates visiting several temples each day ahead of elections. That adds impetus to religion here,” says the retired college lecturer. In Japan’s most recent election, the Liberal Democratic Party lost many votes because of its ties to the Unification Church (“the Moonies”). Chen contrasts the progress made by anti-religion movements in
Could Taiwan’s democracy be at risk? There is a lot of apocalyptic commentary right now suggesting that this is the case, but it is always a conspiracy by the other guys — our side is firmly on the side of protecting democracy and always has been, unlike them! The situation is nowhere near that bleak — yet. The concern is that the power struggle between the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and their now effectively pan-blue allies the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) intensifies to the point where democratic functions start to break down. Both
This was not supposed to be an election year. The local media is billing it as the “2025 great recall era” (2025大罷免時代) or the “2025 great recall wave” (2025大罷免潮), with many now just shortening it to “great recall.” As of this writing the number of campaigns that have submitted the requisite one percent of eligible voters signatures in legislative districts is 51 — 35 targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus lawmakers and 16 targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The pan-green side has more as they started earlier. Many recall campaigns are billing themselves as “Winter Bluebirds” after the “Bluebird Action”
RSS