I know this seems a bit back earlier in the week, but as we were looking over the issues people had with the Mutter Museum and how they portrayed themselves in the video, there were things that, clearly giving my major, I was in disagreement with. Whatever a museum puts in their exhibits, they very much have to relate them to their mission, or at least their core exhibition pieces. For instance, the shrunken heads with the various tribes from Latin America, shows through physical anthropology, which students go through medical school for, help us understand the how these tribes explored with body modification. And hello, this is very much related to medicine.
As I mentioned in class, museums started out as people's constant gaining "oddities" or unusual collections and putting them into storage. This NPR article that I found from November 2008, shows the outlining aspects of how museums, like the Mutter started. It also talks about PT Barnum in the beginning on the issue of whether museums come to us as more of education versus entertainment. Quite honestly, it depends on the museum you go to. However, as a whole, or on the main scale, museums are there so that we as humans can preserve pieces from our past. In the case of some of the experiments unethically done on people in the "medical theatre", for example, this museum can show their visitors how these procedure were done and how we aren't doing them now. Most things I learned at museums, I didn't learn in middle, high school, and for some, even college!
So please take a look! I know I preach about this, but it does show some good insight, with somethings that I didn't know!
History of Museums, 'The Memory of Man Kind'
Callie Jayne
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