This essay begins with Aleš Hrdlička, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, who travelled widely across the US collecting hundreds of skeletal remains, brains and other body parts.
In the second half it turns to Great Britain, where – for many years – the Human Tissue Act in 2004 (followed by the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act in 2006), along with non-statutory guidance from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, gave museums a clear framework for the ethical care and treatment of human remains, as well as allowing national museums to deaccession remains for repatriation.
But growing urgency over addressing the legacies of empire in museums, along with changing sensibilities regarding the display of human tissue, are bringing the issue to greater prominence.
As the professor of anatomy at the University of Edinburgh, Tom Gillingwater cares for the institution’s large collection of historic remains, including around 1,500 skulls, mostly acquired during the colonial era of the 1800s and early 1900s.
“It’s a collection that is remarkable and unique, but also challenging,” he says. The university has a long history of repatriating remains. Most recently it returned the skulls of four 19th-century warriors to their descendant community in Taiwan.
This work has become more difficult to navigate in recent years, says Gillingwater. “We are in a more fractured, perhaps sensationalist world,” he says.
“There are a lot of strong opinions held – often rightly – but navigating this environment is becoming more and more difficult for those of us that work in these sensitive areas.”
Overview of museums with human remains in Great Britain
