Following years of soul-searching and months of focus groups and open houses to determine its role and mission, as well as a contentious town hall meeting, Mütter Museum opened its latest exhibit on May 25, writes Alan Yu for WHYY.

Objects on display include a nurse’s uniform from the Blockley Almshouse, a hospital that treated poor people and became Philadelphia General Hospital in 1902. Some of the human specimens and remains the museum has in its collection come from patients who agreed to provide doctors with access to their bodies after death in exchange for treatment.

The exhibit also has big rolls of butcher paper and Post-It notes where visitors can offer their opinion on questions that have been weighing heavily on the museum in the last several years, including what the institution should do with the human remains in its collection.

The exhibit, called the Postmortem Project, has a section with printed copies of human remains policies from other institutions.

It all leads back to the point of the exhibit, which is to get people to respond, according to lead interpretive planner Stacey Mann.

“It’s intentionally rough around the edges because it is a prototype,” she said.

Read more about Mütter Museum’s newest exhibit in WHYY.

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