UMass Amherst professor tackles historical traditions of human body exhibits

University of Massachusetts Amherst assistant history professor Samuel Redman recently published an article examining the purposes and iterations of human body exhibitions in light of the popular series of Body Worlds exhibits.

Redman’s article, “Reconsidering Body Worlds: why do we still flock to exhibits of dead human beings?” examines these types of exhibitions going back to the 16th century, when European nobility collected curiosities that often included human skulls. This trend was continued with the advent of museums that often had anatomical sections, and especially within medical museums, which boasted large numbers of visitors when they opened their doors to the public.

There were anatomical exhibits featuring human remains at many natural history museums and even at some World’s Fairs. While the middle of the 20th century featured a tapering off in the use of human bodies for exhibits, the end of the century saw renewed public interest and the emergence of the Body Worlds exhibits, which use a plastination technique developed by Dr. Gunther von Hagens in the 1970s.

In his article, Redman also acknowledges the controversial aspects of these exhibits, specifically the sourcing of human remains to use in these exhibits, both in the past and today, and the 19th century and early 20th century use of these exhibits to further racial stereotypes of the time.