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![\"Erin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/08-19-2025-k-paynter-Mu\u0308tter-Museum-postmoretm-project-1024x683.jpg\")
The M\u00fctter\u00a0Museum\u2019s Erin McLeary, senior director of collections and research (left), and Sara Ray, senior director of interpretation and engagement (right) (Kimberly Paynter\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\nFinding that information required using historical archives and reading patient records in a way that researchers have not done before, said Erin McLeary, senior director of collections and research.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of reading it from the physician\u2019s perspective, as it is written, you attempt to read against the grain to uncover the patient\u2019s perspective of that encounter,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really powerful technique for imagining the lived experience of someone whose lived experience might be documented in a case report.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Ray said this does justice to the patients because until now the collection reflected the points of view of the physicians who did the collecting.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just an acknowledgement that the historical record is not equal and that doing this type of storytelling offers us one pathway for equalizing who exists in the historical record,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n
She added that this answers a common question people often have about the collection: Why doesn\u2019t the M\u00fctter just give everything back? To which she said her response is always: To whom?\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually have to develop completely new techniques for even discovering that information before we can move on to a conversation about what should be done \u2026 in service of justice to Joseph Williams,\u201d Ray said.\n<\/p>\n
She said other museums in the U.S. and around the world have contacted the M\u00fctter to learn about the work they are doing around ethics.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a really thorny problem for collections to navigate and it\u2019s one that I think people, collections, rightfully or not, are sometimes really hesitant to do,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I can understand why \u2026 it can get very heated, it\u2019s connected to a lot of very tangled difficult problems.\u201d
\nThe M\u00fctter\u00a0Museum\u2019s Erin McLeary, senior director of collections and research (left), and Sara Ray, senior director of interpretation and engagement (right) (Kimberly Paynter\/WHYY)\n<\/p>\n
The M\u00fctter Museum\u2019s Postmortem project also came at a turbulent time for the museum, with a national controversy and high profile leadership changes.\n<\/p>\n
Almost three years ago, museum leaders at the time took down all of its online exhibits<\/a>. They argued the museum had to go through their entire collection and answer long overdue ethical questions about human remains, and how the museum came to have them. Long time fans worried that the museum would lose its identity and no longer serve the same educational purpose. The conflict led to national<\/a> coverage<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n The museum\u2019s CEO<\/a>, as well as the executive director who started the Postmortem project, Kate Quinn, have since left<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n Stacey Mann, who was the lead interpretive planner for the Postmortem project and worked with Quinn, said in a statement that \u201cI was very proud to be part of the project based on its original vision, and while the project changed under several changes in leadership, I hope that the museum and the college have learned something from the process that will inform their practice moving forward for the better.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Ray said the project changed because they learned \u201cthe way that we were asking questions at the end of the grant process looked different than the way that we were asking [when] the grant was written, but that\u2019s not a failure of the project. That means that we learned more.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Ray and McLeary both stressed that they are grateful to Quinn for her work in starting the project, and \u201cam gratified that we were able to land the plane of that conversation.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finding that information required using historical archives and reading patient records in a way that researchers have not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26937,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-143593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-mutter-museum","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}