The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia is a place that inspires strong emotions. Its dark interior is filled with artefacts from medical history. There is a cabinet of 139 human skulls collected by the Austrian anatomist Josef Hyrtl, looming and tiny skeletons from sufferers of rare diseases, foetuses suspended inside glass jars. With its deep red velvet drapes, the Mütter has a 19th-century air—fitting, since it was founded more than 160 years ago, after a bequest from the American surgeon Thomas Dent Mütter. Some people say they have been sickened by the experience; others have gotten married there.
For the past several years, the Mütter has been the focus of even fiercer feelings than usual. In January 2023, ProPublica published an investigation into museums that had failed to repatriate Indigenous remains as required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Nagpra). The Mütter was one of the institutions named, reportedly holding the remains of at least 52 Native Americans.
The day the investigation was published, Kate Quinn, the executive director of the Mütter, reportedly told staff to take down any online resources or social media posts that mentioned human remains. For the Mütter, that meant the lion’s share of its digital content—including YouTube videos with millions of views. Quinn later said the content was coming under an ethical review. But to critics, the move seemed abrupt and opaque.
Enter the Mütter’s many passionate fans. More than 30,000 people signed a petition accusing Quinn and her then-boss, Mira Irons, the president and chief executive of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, of decisions that were “reactive and fear-based as well as predicated on a lack of understanding and outright disdain of the Museum”.
Both Quinn and Irons had told the press they wanted the Mütter to focus more on ideas of health and well-being, and less on a perception of spectacle or oddities. Yet fans feared the changes threatened the very core of the museum. Several high-level staffers departed and at least two people who had donated their body parts to the museum asked for them back. The controversy played out in the media, with accusation of “cancel culture” and elitism.
Eventually, Irons resigned in September 2023 and Quinn left this past April.
More than two years after the controversy kicked off, the dust is beginning to settle. The Mütter is now under the leadership of two science historians: Erin McLeary (the senior director of collections and research) and Sara Ray (the senior director of interpretation and engagement). In August, the Mütter also introduced a new policy on the “use, acceptance and exhibition” of human remains. The plan is to continue exhibiting remains, but with a renewed commitment to “contextualising their history and provenance”.
“The public deserves access to this,” Ray tells The Art Newspaper. “Now it’s not just a teaching resource about the body. It’s a teaching resource about history.”
The museum’s new human remains policy is the most thorough it has ever had, McLeary says. It was developed based on guidance from the International Council of Museums, the American Alliance of Museums and other groups committed to rigorous standards. It recognises the unique status that human remains have in museum collections and commits to treating them in a “sensitive and respectful” manner. It also acknowledges that many human remains were obtained in ways that would outrage modern sensibilities, and that these collections are often tied to legacies of scientific racism and colonialism. The museum is committed to researching provenance, consulting with descendant communities and facilitating repatriation where appropriate. Future acquisitions will only occur through direct donation or bequest. Photography or videography of the remains is prohibited without explicit permission.
The new policy was shaped by the museum’s Postmortem Project, which included a two-year review and community engagement process funded by a grant from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. One of the big goals was to find out what kinds of stories and information people wanted the Mütter to share.
Opening minds
Ray and McLeary say a surprising clarity emerged from that feedback process. People were “consistently saying: ‘Give us the full story’, ‘Be clear about where materials came from’, ‘Be transparent about these histories’”, McLeary says.
Ray notes that the request was not just about clarity for clarity’s sake. “That call is coming from a very profound recognition of the humanness of the specimens,” she says. “The approach that we are putting forward is offering deep context, in as much as we can give it, to who people were and how they came into the collection.”
That new “deep context” will take the form of expanded interpretative materials, including a printed guide available in four languages that covers the museum’s flagship specimens and offers background on the Mütter as well as language visitors might encounter. Audio components are forthcoming, as are new public programmes and events.
Ray and McLeary suspect the controversy has created some false binaries, and they hope this new level of interpretation will help the public move past them. “Both sides are equally coming to this moment of recognising that there are human beings here who deserve to have their story told,” Ray says.
Part of telling that story at the Mütter will include a de-anonymisation process, which the new leaders say began as a pilot project. The goal was to see whether the museum’s unique set of records would allow researchers to put a name to some of the specimens collected. The answer appears to be yes, in part because many remains came from the Philadelphia area and can be tied to case reports, in which physicians discuss their medical relevance and provide demographic data. So far, around 5% of the museum’s human remains collection has been tied to specific individuals.
McLeary says that while other museums have done this type of work, the Mütter is the first to do it publicly. She and Ray hope that their research methodology, meant as a proof of concept, can be shared with other museums. “If you ask this type of question and bring in these types of records, even if you don’t get to a human identity, you can enrich the type of story you’re going to be able to tell,” Ray says.
Nagpra work has also been a major focus at the museum, a move made possible after the federal government clarified its own guidance with new rules that went into effect in January 2024. In the first few months of 2025, McLeary says, the Mütter sent out 101 invitations to consult to Native nations. The museum is now working its way through follow-up meetings. “It’s a slow process that requires a lot of communication,” McLeary says. “But we’ve been making a big push to get some ancestors to where they should be.”
Meanwhile, staff say that most of the YouTube videos (around 80%) will be returning in the coming weeks. Overall, the focus is less on major changes in the core galleries and more about a newly sensitive approach.
“This is a collection that provokes strong responses,” McLeary says, “but they offer new ways of understanding the past. If we can use the curiosity that brings you to this museum to help build skills of thinking empathetically across time, that is a transferrable skill.”
