ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

What Do Museums Do with Collections of Human Remains?

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

English Abstract

In recent years, there has been a reckoning with how and whether to display Indigenous and other human remains. We have seen the closure of galleries, reorganization of entire collections, and the repatriation of people’s ancestors across transnational borders. But how do we as scholars and curatorial experts attend to legacy collections of human remains in museums’ and universities’ stores when those remains exist outside of a recognized process for recognition or repatriation?

This roundtable brings together directors, curators, and managers of museums in the United States and Europe as well as scholars of the history of science and medicine to address questions of teaching, material culture, care, and temporal commitments to collections of human remains. People’s remains have been preserved in such a manner to persist in these collections for the foreseeable future. This roundtable will give us a chance to speak with some of the museum professionals and scholars who are guiding these bodies into our collective future and hear how they are shaping the stories told by the people who make up their respective collections.

The five roundtable participants guide the management of human remains from all over the world, dating back as far as the seventh century BCE. The participants care for collections at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas; The University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland; the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Each institution carries a long and complex history of engagement with the history of science—both as contributors to scientific knowledge and as subjects of historical investigation. Together, this roundtable brings forward a diverse set of perspectives on the multiple histories (and possible futures) of the human bodies within these collections.

Sub Unit

• Roundtable

Chair

• Trevor M Engel, University of Texas Medical Branch

Participants

• Paula Summerly, University of Texas Medical Branch

• Erin McLeary

• Sara Ray, Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia

• Malcolm MacCallum, University of Edinburgh

• Laurens de Rooy, Amsterdam UMC

Session Organizer

• Trevor M Engel, University of Texas Medical Branch