The Mütter Museum

A part of The Hyrtl Skull Collection

      This week, our class made our final field trip, this time to the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. An old establishment, it was opened to the public some thirty years ago. Before it was opened to the public, it had served as a sort of library for medical tools and specimens, available only to physicians. Now the Mütter Museum is one of the most well-known museums in Philadelphia, a popular tourist site for its collection of oddities.
     The Mütter Museum is a strange place. It is built of beautiful marble and polished wood, and the walls are lined with wooden cabinets. Initially, the museum almost looks like The Wagner Institute with a bloated budget. What's held in the cabinets are wonders to hold anybody's interest. These include skeletons of people with unfortunate disorders, preserved organs, wax casts of skin ailments, and my favorite, a huge collection of skulls from all over the world. The "specimens" (our tour guide was careful to call them specimens and not exhibits) represent not the most ordinary conditions of humans, but rather the most extreme and extraordinary.
     The Mütter Museum is a place alive with memory. Many specimens in the museum are over a century old, and the museum officials are more than happy to share the history of these specimens with visitors. The stories attached to the specimens are significant, as much of the importance people give to the objects is in the history they can tell. This is true of any museum, and it is a way in which they act as an archive. The act of display is what most distinctly sets museums apart from archives. Display is important for expressing the purpose of objects. As Michelle Henning states, "display gives things their documentary and evidentiary function." As such, the displays are used to express the intentions of the museum, and they act as the voice of the museum.
      My feelings for The Mütter Museum are mixed. I was delighted to see another old-fashioned museum with regal display cases. The exhibits were interesting and bizarre, and even more interesting and bizarre were the stories behind them. I can't help but feel as though the gross-out effect may have been overplayed, however. The occasional gasps and "Oh my god!"s from my classmates were humorous, but I have to wonder if the museum's entertainment qualities are overriding its educational qualities. Either way, The Mütter Museum is an interesting place and without a doubt worth at least a visit.