Museums as Deathscapes

Abstract

The museum is very often equivalent to a place that is filled with objects and references to human death. Accordingly, this article aims at bringing greater clarity into some of the precautions taken by museums when they choose to expose what can be considered as a highly sensitive matter, namely human remains. Put differently, the scope of the text concerns how museums deal with the task of displaying the dead in public. How do they act in order to facilitate the actual display, and at the same time minimize the risk for public criticism? The overall discussion is informed by the idea of museums as deathscapes, and the intentional use of a kind of ‘morbid aura’ that is sometimes attached to museum objects with a close association to human death.