Penn Museum to Cease Exhibiting Human Remains

The Penn Museum (formerly known as the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology) has revealed that it hasupdated its policyregarding the treatment of relics, in accordance with which it will no longer exhibit visible human tissue. Wrapped mummified remains inside vessels may still be placed on view; these will be accompanied by warning signs. The museum will use replicas of human remains in its exhibitions and in all but its most advanced educational courses, in which the real thing may still appear. “It’s about prioritizing human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities,” Penn Museum director Christopher Woods told regional PennsylvanianewsserviceWHYY News.

“We want to make sure that these are our front and center of how the museum operates.”RelatedHELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION SUED FOR “DESTROYING” PAINTER’S LEGACYBMA CREATES PAID INTERNSHIPS HONORING VALERIE MAYNARD The revamped policy is part of alarger global reckoningregarding the handling by institutions of human remains, many of which can be traced to Indigenous civilizations or enslaved populations. The Penn Museum in recent years has faced criticism over its Morton Crania Collection, a group of skulls that were once the property of nineteenth-century physician Samuel George Morton, whose racist theories regarding intellect crucially influenced twentieth-century eugenics. The skulls are thought to have belonged to enslaved Philadelphians; the museum has apologized for the collection, and the bones are slated to be interred at the city’s historically Black Eden Cemetery, pending court approval. The Penn Museum had earlier sparked afirestormwith its handling of a set of remains recovered at the site of the 1985 MOVE rowhouse bombing in West Philadelphia.

Identified as likely belonging to a fourteen-year-old girl killed in the blast, the bones remained in the institution’s collection for years and were featured in online classes. An independent review found the museum guilty of “gross insensitivity.”.