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The Mütter Museum is a medical museum located in the Center City area of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It contains a collection of medical oddities, anatomical and pathological specimens, wax models, and antique medical equipment. The museum is located at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The original purpose of the collection, donated by doctor Thomas Dent Mütter in 1858, was medical research and education.
The museum is best known for its large collection of skulls and anatomical specimens including a wax model of a woman with a human horn growing out of her forehead, the tallest skeleton on display in North America, a nine-foot-long human colon[1] that contained over 40 pounds of fecal matter, and the petrified body of the mysterious Soap Lady, whose corpse was turned into a soapy substance called adipocere. Many wax models from the early 19th century are on display as are numerous preserved organs and body parts. The museum also hosts a collection of teratological specimens (preserved human fetal specimens), a malignant tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland's hard palate, the conjoined liver from the famous Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker, and a growth removed from President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
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Gretchen Worden
Gretchen Worden (1947-2004) remains perhaps the best known person associated of the Mütter Museum. She joined the museum staff as a curatorial assistant in 1975, became the museum's curator in 1982 and its director in 1988.[2]
Worden was devoted to promoting the museum. She was a frequent guest on The Late Show With David Letterman, "displaying a mischievous glee as she frightened him with human hairballs and wicked-looking Victorian surgical tools, only to disarm him with her antic laugh"[3] and appeared in numerous PBS, BBC and cable television documentaries as well as NPR's "Fresh Air with Terry Gross"[3] on the museum's behalf.[2] She was also instrumental in the creation of numerous Mütter Museum projects, including the popular Mütter Museum calendars and the book, The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.[2]
During Worden's tenure, the vistorship of the museum grew from several hundred visitors each year to, at the time of her death, more than 60,000 tourists annually.[2]
After her death, the Mütter Museum opened a gallery in her memory. In an article written about the gallery's September 30th, 2005 opening, the New York Times described the "Gretchen Worden Room":
| “ | There are jars of preserved human kidneys and livers, and a man's skull so eaten away by tertiary syphilis that it looks like pounded rock. There are dried severed hands shiny as lacquered wood, showing their veins like leaves; a distended ovary larger than a soccer ball; spines and leg bones so twisted by rickets they're painful just to see; the skeleton of a dwarf who stood 3 feet 6 inches (1.1 m) small, next to that of a giant who towered seven and a half feet. And "Jim and Joe," the green-tinged corpse of a two-headed baby, sleeping in a bath of formaldehyde.[3] | ” |
Although Worden was known for using humor and shock factor to garner interest in the museum, she nonetheless was respectful of museum's artifacts. In the foreword of The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, she wrote "While these bodies may be ugly, there is a terrifying beauty in the spirits of those forced to endure these afflictions."[4]
Related Projects
Blast Books has published two large books of photography involving the Mutter Museum.
The first book, 2002's The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, contains images of the museum's fascinating exhibits shot by contemporary fine art photographers. Included in the book are photographs of "an early-19th-century Parisian widow with a six-inch (152 mm) horn protruding from the forehead; the connected livers of Chang and Eng, the world-famous Siamese twins; the skeleton of a 7’6” giant from Kentucky; and a collection of 139 skulls showing anatomic variation among ethnic groups in central and eastern Europe"[4] among others. William Wegman, Joel-Peter Witkin and Shelby Lee Adams have work that appear in the book.
The second book, 2007's Mütter Museum Historic Medical Photographs, focuses is on the museum's archive of "rare historic photographs, most of which have never been seen by the public."[5]. Photographs ranging "from Civil War photographs showing injury and recovery, to the ravages of diseases not yet conquered in the 19th century, to pathological anomalies, to psychological disorders"[5] are showcased.
Mütter, a screenplay based on the life of Mütter Museum founder Thomas Dent Mütter, won the 2003 "Set In Philadelphia" Screenwriting Award at the Philadelphia Film Festival[6] and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship at the 2004 Hampton International Film Festival[7]. The screenplay, written by poet and Philadelphia native Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, remains unproduced, although a short based on the feature-length script was created as a part of the Philadelphia Film Festival prize package[8].
References
- ^ Museums: The Strange and Weird | Atypical Events
- ^ a b c d College of Physicians website: "In memoriam: Gretchen Worden (1947-2004), Mütter Museum Director"
- ^ a b c New York Times "A Curator's Tastes Were All Too Human" By JOHN STRAUSBAUGH. October 11, 2005
- ^ a b The Mütter Museum: Of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Amazon page
- ^ a b Mütter Museum Historic Medical Photographs Amazon page
- ^ Greater Philadelphia Film Office: SIP Screenwriting Award
- ^ Aptowicz bio on Sloan Foundation-related website
- ^ Mütter Short website
External links
- Mütter Museum
- NPR's "Fresh Air": Terry Gross's 2002 Interview with Mütter Museum director, Gretchen Worden
- Mütter: Short film based on the life of Mütter Museum founder, filmed at Mütter Museum as part of 2003 Philadelphia Film Festival
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 7 October 2008, at 00:05.
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