After two tumultuous years for Mütter Museum, the new leadership is working on reimaging the exhibits to present a fuller context for the specimens, writes Alan Yu for WHYY.
Science historians Sara Ray and Erin McLeary are now in charge of Philadelphia’s famous medical history museum that is visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Ray and McLeary are both “incredibly talented” and “have great ideas as to how we can continue to provide the context of education that many of these exhibits really do require,” said Dr. Larry Kaiser, CEO of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which runs the museum.
The two believe that the institution can tell a compelling story about how factors such as social conditions, contemporary medical practices, and family structure leave imprints on the human body.
“You can engage with this space as a very fascinating flip book of life and the ways that life inscribes itself on the human body,” said Ray.
McLeary added that their aim is to present a more complete picture of a person’s life story by incorporating other objects from the museum’s collection, which includes 500,000 items, of which only about 6,600 are human remains.
Read more about the Mütter Museum’s new leadership’s vision in WHYY.
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