Hello again! I am here to inform you all on updates and changes I've made to my original idea. Though the central idea of human remains in museums is the same, I will be focusing on the display and ethics behind museums along with four specific case studies: mummies, bog bodies, cadavers, and Body-World exhibits. These case studies are all remains, but in different forms that continue to be displayed around the world facing controversy and ethical dilemmas.
This project is all research based so I don't have exciting news to share about places I visited recently or people I've talked to, but I can talk about what I've read. For example, Body-World exhibits would use real bodies usually prisoners of war in their displays, without getting permission from the relatives of the deceased. To keep bodies preserved, a method called plastination was used where clear resin was pumped into the tissue and later hardened, preserving the remains and putting them on display.
I also briefly talked about in my first blog post how I went to Museo Egizio in Torino, Italy and that is what inspired me to choose this topic. Mummies are possibly the most displayed form of remains and can be found around the world in numerous institutions. The lack of ethical guidelines reside from the fact that the remains are ancient and no one can give consent on their behaves. If we're being completely honest, most people go to museums to see mummies as they are so popular, so getting rid of them could be detrimental to museums and their visitor count which is another reason they are displayed.
More will be discussed in my next post as I just wanted to give you all a little insight to my research as I changed the majority of my idea!
Photo of plastination from https://www.sandiegovideoproduction.com/plastination/
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