"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings ;/ Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair! /

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of the colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away." From "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

With in-person classes cancelled due to the nasty bug going around, I present to you an (academic) but hopefully still interesting blog post about commemoration and the display of the dead.

I'm not 100% sure why I thought of Ozymandias during the 90 or so pages of readings I had. I think it was a mix of the references to the presentation of Egyptian mummies, but also the theme of death and the impermanence of, well, everything. It's grim, but to me, something incredibly thought provoking; especially when considering the topic of commemoration.

Commemorating war can be easy. I mean, look at Gettysburg. The different regiments and brigades of soldiers raised money and smacked down a monument with "89th Pennsylvania" carved on it and some laurels or other symbols of the might and success of the group.

Even in this situation, you are able to celebrate both sides. A couple of yards away from a Pennsylvania memorial is a South Carolina memorial. Both sides experienced the conflict and in just, they laid down memorials so that no one would forget the battle.

With so many memorials, none are really about peace after The Civil War and reconstruction, it's about celebrating the men who fought in a war and the dead that came from the groups. The generals even have their own statues whether they survived or were killed.

One of the readings highlighted a memorial in Ottawa that was created to represent Canada's role in peacekeeping and subsequent peace. With as easy as it is to just pop up a memorial to war sometimes, representing peace is not nearly as easy. Especially, as the author (Paul Gough) says, the memorial was supposed to be a tribute to the living, not a memorial to the dead. This immediately gets more difficult when even in peacekeeping operations, there is death. Groups of soldiers expressed their
concern with the lack of commemoration of those who died.

These demands for proper commemoration is a continuous issue that museums have to face. In the case of redress, as discussed by Ian Radforth, in order to have a successful campaign, an ethnic community has to be on the same page. They have to accept the same story and have the same ideas about why they are attempting redress. This goal for unity often causes discord between individuals. One person's truth is anothers half-truth or outright lie. As Radforth quotes,
Forging a politically powerful redress narrative unfortunately comes at a price: competing and alternative memories are put aside as the group and public mobilize around a single story.
The strive for what a group can consider proper commemoration can become an issue with museums trying to create neutral displays. David Dean brings up several exhibits that had to be changed or cancelled due to a museum attempting to address a question that their visitors may not have thought before. For example, the War Museum had a WWII bomber exhibit that goes through the positive history of the group, what they did, and the sacrifices they made, however, they did have an area that examined the impact on German noncombatants. I mean, it's understandable that if you bomb a train depot, you're probably going to hit a couple other things other than that depot.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective) a veterans group expressed grievances that the photos used in this portion of the exhibit, those being the corpses of women and children, are a parallel to how those photos were used by the German propaganda machine. Seeing this in a museum where acts of heroism in war are celebrated was inappropriate. On one hand, it's understandable, it was such a digression from other exhibits and when it comes to death, it's immediately a sensitive issue. These men had one goal and that was to put an end to the war, however, by hiding thought provoking issues that the "others" suffered at the hands of the winners might not be an appropriate display of history as well.



Death is a constant issue in museum exhibitions, I mean, I'll bet over half of you reading this post has seen an Egyptian mummy at some point while visiting a museum. I for one know I can go to my local museum and see Nefrina, a woman (not even upper class) who was mummified and currently resides in Reading, PA.

Looking back at my personal experience with Nefrina, I was terrified of her. I could hardly bring
myself to be in the exhibit hall where she was interred (this, looking back, is likely the reason I stopped saying I wanted to be an archeologist/anthropologist when I was much younger). Of course, now, I can look at her and learn about her life. But does that make it right? To display a body in an exhibit where people can oogle and gawk at the visage of a "thing" long gone? My favorite reading was one by Samuel Alberti titled succinctly, "Should we Display the Dead?"

In the reading, the author addresses three stances, Yes, No, and Sometimes. From the "Yes" standpoint, it's reasonable to display the dead. We can learn about anatomy, about past civilizations, and understand long gone diseases. From the "No" standpoint, these bodies are treated as things. Now these bodies, especially mummies, whether we can conceive it or not, were once alive. Yet it is still easy to think of the bodies as artifacts of the past and not individuals who probably never wanted to be placed in a glass case for modern day humans to stare down at them. Of course we can also say, well, we don't know what they would want, they've been dead for thousands of years! The immortality sought by Egyptians was the immortality attached to the land - their home of Egypt. To be miles upon miles away, removed from where they were originally entombed is a bit of a melancholy thought.

Like any good argument, there is also the "sometimes" stance. This is where I personally fall. If bodies are treated with disrespect-as objects instead of people-a museum may have to reanalyze why they have a body on display. However, to deprive the public of the curiosity of death, especially western cultures where death is seen as taboo and practice obscuring the dead and grieving in funeral homes, might not be as great a practice either.


Just think of The Mütter Museum. To walk into a museum and be surrounded by medical models hardly has the same impact as seeing the skulls of those afflicted with syphalis or other illnesses. However, (and this is a true story) to have the skull of a French soldier killed in WWII on display might just be a bit insensitive (this skull was returned to France to be interred by the way).

On the other hand, the most recent exhibit to be updated is one of Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP).  This rare disease turns soft tissue into bone and is the disease of Harry Eastlack who has resided in The Mütter Museum since the 70s and more recently, Carol Orzel. Both of these individuals, and this is important, gave verbal permission to be displayed in a museum. This permission is the most important part and has to be based on the understanding that the display will be appropriate. In this case, there is no problem with the display and it was the wishes of the individuals to be displayed to further the study and public knowledge of FOP.

Hopefully, if I wrote everything legibly, commemoration is not easy to address. If museums take one side, there is a good chance the other side will not be pleased with what is presented. Even if you do everything perfectly, someone will be upset. As David Dean quotes,
...consultation with the wider community and those whose experiences are represented and constructed is no longer enough; museums must conduct themselves in a way that will minimize and eliminate offense.

Stay safe and healthy my friends,

--Jess--

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