Remains of Today: How Human Remains are Displayed in Museums

Smithsonian forensic anthropologist Douglas Owsley stands in the National Museum of Natural History with the skull and facial reconstruction of “Jane” from The Denver Post

By: Emma Cregan

In Colonial Jamestown, the remains of 14-year-old “Jane” lie scattered in a glass case. She died during the “Starving Time,” the bleak winter of 1609-1610 when a famine killed over 80 percent of the colony. Public displays of human remains, like “Jane,” have been used to illustrate humanity’s struggle for survival.

But “Jane” can no longer speak for herself. And her grotesque display raises the question: should she be in the exhibit at all? These debates about preserving and displaying human remains sit at the center of a wider reckoning in the museum world.

Mummies, skeletons, and preserved body parts have long been an accepted feature of the museum environment. However, museums acquired many of the human remains in their collections through the exploitation of oppressed communities. Questions about consent and abusive power structures are forcing institutions to contend with the violent past of colonization and the role museums played. 

“It's sheer voyeurism," said Peg Brady about Jamestown’s “Jane.” Brady, Assistant Director of Collections at Stanford’s Cantor Art Center, wondered if it’s possible to tell Jane’s story without subjecting her body to public ogling. Laura Jones, Director of Heritage Services and University Archaeologist for Stanford University, agreed that such displays appeal to a morbid curiosity about past violence and don’t provide any educational benefit. The general public does not view a body with the same knowledge as a historian. Museum visitors could be viewing these remains as they would an animatronic skeleton in a haunted house.

Denise Lim, Assistant Professor of Black Material and Visual Culture at The New School’s Parsons School of Design, believes that these displays separate remains “from the person… the communities…the families, and…the networks that they were a part of.” Echoing Lim’s sentiments, Jones noted that human remains displayed in museums aren’t treated with dignity when they are “stuck in some fish tank in the exhibit hall.”

Sally M. Yerkovich, Adjunct Professor in Columbia University’s anthropology department and Chair of the International Council of Museums Ethics Committee, observed that many museums are choosing not to display remains at all. In October 2023, the American Museum of Natural History announced they would no longer display human remains in their collection. Earlier in April 2023, the Smithsonian announced the creation of their Human Remains Task Force to reckon with their history of acquiring human remains through exploitative practices.

Aleš Hrdlička, a 20th-century anthropologist and eugenicist, obtained many of the remains in the Smithsonian’s collection. Hrdlička used his collection of 280 brains to argue that the brains of Caucasian people were bigger than those of other races. Lim from the New School believes “the mass acquisition of human remains…is not neutral or objective.” Scientists like Hrdlička used human remains in museums to create a racial hierarchy in the 19th and 20th centuries.

(Gallagh Man, a bog body discovered in Co Galway, at the National Museum of Ireland/The Irish Times/Matt Kavanagh)

Can museum curators artfully preserve the dignity of the deceased? Museums have experimented with alternative designs of the exhibit space to grant the deceased greater respect and dignity. The Kingship and Sacrifice exhibit in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin presents bog mummies in enclosed spaces that resemble tombs. The sombre, meditative displays invite visitors to contemplate the lives of ancient ancestors, as if they were visiting the grave of a loved one.

But still, like “Jane,” these bodies never gave consent. Can people only feel kinship with people of the past by viewing a human body? Jones points out that these people were victims of a crime when they were sacrificed, and now their bodies are subjected to further indignities. Their bodies were subjected to a brutal assault in life, and now in death they are again denied a choice in what happens to their body. Even with well-intended exhibits, it’s hard to break away from what Lim describes as the Victorian “cabinet of curiosities,” in which the deceased are objectified and exoticized.

If museums stop displaying human remains, they can repatriate them to their communities of origin. Repatriation has opened the door to greater collaboration between museums and indigenous communities and created a new vision for what museums could look like. Traditional museum displays that keep remains and objects trapped in glass cases imply that marginalized cultures have reached their endpoint in history’s timeline. With greater involvement from descendant communities, the dead can be treated with greater respect, and museum curators can exhibit how these cultures live on today.