PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Mütter Museum, known for its display of the macabre, has a new exhibit. It’s a part of a larger conversation about ethics at the museum that surfaced last year.
In partnership with The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Center City museum hosts the “Postmortem Project,” a new interactive exhibit opening Saturday that’s part community feedback and part science.
“We’re going to bring the public along with us in this because it’s not an easy discussion for sure,” said Kate Quinn, the museum’s executive director. “What does it mean to have consent?”
Quinn was executive director for less than a year when the museum came under fire in 2023 for how it handled and displayed its collection of approximately 6,600 human remains. During the controversy, Quinn faced criticism for allegedly removing much of the museum's online content. says the new exhibit is, in part, a response to those discussions.
In response, Quinn set up a series of community focus groups beginning last October and initiated the first systematic audit of the museum’s collection in decades. “Our collection numbers about 30,000 objects,” she said. “The majority are human remains and the human remains are in the process of an audit we’re doing — the first audit in 80 years.”
The exhibit is the second part of the civic engagement project — collecting community feedback and ideas.
“The exhibit is putting the results of those conversations on the walls for transparency to what folks are saying and what it is they are interested in learning more about,” she said.
“We’re inviting the public to hear some stories and meet some of the specimens and help us decide what it is you think and what you’d do with the specimens.”
Quinn explains that the discussion will help her team determine what the future of the museum will look like. “It's a thoughtful and engaging conversation,” she said.