Museum og kranium. Institusjonell bevaring av menneskets viktigste kroppsdel
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.3545Keywords:
human remains, heads, collection management, exhibition, ethicsAbstract
The article discusses the dilemmas and challenges that arises when we include ourselves in our collections, in the sense of human skulls and heads. The human head is undoubtedly the most vital of body parts, and a body part that has a unique symbolic and cultural value. Included in a collection, a head can evoke a large number of potential meanings, varying with the institutional and cultural context of the collection. In an anatomical collection a head signifies primarily scientific value, whereas in an ethnographic museum a head signifies the exotic and distant. Skulls and heads, whether they are pure bone, tattooed, shrinked, decapitated, stuffed or pickled, are also museum objects that make good case studies for the continuous discussion on the ethics of human remains in collections. The article uses a number of examples of different ways heads have been included in collections to point at the challenges of collection management in such cases.
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