Vienna's human remains exhibition dabbles with ethical dilemmas
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Loading... - Cade Atkinson
- 15 Dec 2021
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The collection of around 50,000 human body parts – including the likes of a vast, bloated liver, an infant with lacerated skin, to the deformed skeleton of a young girl – was first conceived in 1796 to help train medical students.
In today's world, such gruesome galleries raise tricky questions over whether the public good outweighs moral issues such as human dignity, power and exploitation, and the consent of those – admittedly long dead – subjects on display for all.
“We try to avoid voyeurism by giving as much explanation as possible,” says curator Eduard Winter, pointing out that photography inside the galleries is not allowed.
Winter said he hopes that when museum-goers are confronted with “a 30-kilogram (66-pound) liver... they will realize what alcohol can do to the human body.”
Curious visitors can also learn about the effects of viruses on the body or what burn injuries to blood vessels look like. They can peer at human organs, skulls and body parts – exhibits that some other countries restrict to researchers.
For its supporters, education around the scientific investigation of disease and human health means access to the collection is in the public interest.
“Everyone will have to face illness one day,” exhibition director Katrin Vohland says.
“Some people come because they themselves are affected” by certain health problems, while others “want to know more about how science has progressed,” she adds.
'New level of awareness'
The exhibition reopened to the public in September, with only a portion of the world's largest publicly accessible anatomical pathology collection put on display at the renovated museum.
“I knew the former exhibition, but the current one is much better prepared, because everything is described, there is much more information,” biology teacher Christian Behavy said during a recent visit to the museum by Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Behavy, who was leading a group of teenagers around the museum, said that his class “could take the information in better” from the exhibits than from textbooks. Read More…
