Yesterday we visited the Mutter Museum, it was very fascinating. The Mutter Museum was a College for Physicians that opened in the mid 1800s. A bigger portion of the collection was donated by a man name Thomas Mutter. The Museum opened to the public in 1970s and it now sees over hundred thousand visitors. While looking at all the artifacts/collections all I kept thinking about was how most of the artifacts had their markings on them. It brought me back to when I was an intern at URS, an archaeological firm, and I had to mark artifacts. My boss, Becky, told me that the markings get removed when they go on display in a museum. In the Mutter the artifacts still had markings on them. A person who never worked with a collection of artifacts wouldn’t have noticed that the artifacts on display weren’t supposed to be marked. When looking at the different collections, the concept of the index card was popping into my mind as well. The index card was a technology, enabling data to be stored in standardized form and systematically retrieved (Henning; 132-133). With every “artifact” there was a card with information on it. Marcy, our tour guide, pointed out that some of the index cards were written by the doctors themselves. In the Warden collection, the catalog card was written for the audience and they want to change all of the index cards so that it is written for the visitors. When looking at the “index card” the language on them was a bit different from the cards that were written by the doctors.
This was my second trip to the museum. It was a different experience prior to the first because of all the knowledge I have of museums. I knew that this was a collection from Thomas Mutter but I never thought of these artifacts as archival. According to an online dictionary an archive is a place or collection containing records; documents, or other materials of historical value. This definition could also define a museum as well, since it also serves the same purpose. I think the main thing that differentiates museums and archives is that in museums the artifacts that are more publically displayed than in an archive. When the term archival comes to mind I cannot help to think of the word storage and library. So the Mutter is a place that brings both of these definitions together.
The many collections were very interesting to look at, the dermatology, the rack of skulls, the Siamese twins, the soap lady, the tall and short humans and the man whose colon had 8ft of waste inside of it. I sound a little morbid but my favorite collections were the babies in the jars and the skeletal diseases, because I am an anthropologist. The rack of skulls were interesting to look at, especially their catalog cards. I want to know how they got all of that information about the skulls. Marcy told us different ways they could have gathered the information. I thought it was interesting that grave robbers used to steal human remains as well as material culture. The dermatology section was interesting because my Poppop has that same disorder that the lady with the “horn” had or the tree man has. So I learned something new since I always thought that what was on his ear was a mole. I forget the technical term that Marcy called it. It was interesting that in the beginning people were allowed to borrow specimen.
I liked this Museum. I thought t it was interesting that this was the museum we went to last. It brought all of the different concepts together that we have learned in class, except for the diorama, so I can see why our teacher did that.
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