The details Sheila Hill provided about the "human skin" exhibit make it
comprehensible and even interesting.  However, the thread has touched on
some related areas that prompt comment.

Some years ago, when I was superintendent of a historical park in Montana,
the owner of the bar next door to our office offered me a frozen carcass of
a two-headed, six-legged calf to stuff and display at the ranch.  I
diplomatically suggested it would get a lot more  attention if he displayed
it right in his tavern.  He quickly replied that it would be bad for
business!

The idea of exhibiting tattooed Maori skin or the caucasoid mummies of the
Tarim Basin strikes me as considerably more insensitive than exhibiting the
calf, and just as  bad for business...our business as anthropological
interpreters and curators, as students and tellers of the human story.

First off, there are members of some cultures (Athabaskans, in our area)
who would be horrified at being in the presence of dead folks (or pieces
thereof, in the case of actual skin samples).  They're not many in the
scale of world population, and they wouldn't go to such an exhibit if they
had forewarning of its contents, but neither, it seems to me, should their
sensitivities be totally disregarded.

Second, while the information coming from the examination of the caucasoid
mummies is interesting and may give insight into population movements of
the past, exhibiting the beings themselves is just too sideshow, too "look
at the freaky people" for this old interpreter's views of professional
ethics.

The message conveyed is classification of people as objects, especially if
the ethnicity  of the objectified people is different from that of those
doing the objectifying.  I personally believe "Archaeology" magazine has
recently fallen into this trap with its two successive covers of human
remains in living color...one of a mummy mentioned above and the other of a
skull from the Americas.

What can be the purpose of such grotesque, macabre imagery but to sell
issues on the basis of morbid fascination?  Good business?  Not in my book!
Can you imagine a better way to reinforce the public image of
archeologists as grave robbers...pot hunters with fancy titles?  I can't.
Talk about self-inflicted wounds!

So the skin exhibit could be fascinating and, as Linda Young suggested, it
could include socio-cultural insights, but I hope it stays respectful of
other human beings, however different they may be.

Tom Vaughan
The Waggin' Tongue

Tom Vaughan

The Waggin' Tongue