Will Mutter Museum return to its wonderful, horrible ways?

UPDATE: Despite Mutter CEO Kaiser’s failure to talk to me, he told the Inquirer his view of the museum’s mission was different from the departed Woke women. Count on a return to what had been.

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All good things must end, they say — and bad things, too.

Such as the extreme experiment in ultra sensitivity at the infamous and  deliriously creepy Mutter Museum in Center City.

About four years ago, new leadership swept into the museum that dates back to 1863. It was satirically called the Little Shop of Horrors because of its collection of bizarre, or gruesome, or macabre, or disturbing, items that was originally assembled for doctors and medical students.

In the 1970’s, it started admitting the public and developed a large cult following. In 2022, it garnered a record $3 million in admission fees, one-third of the revenues of the College of Physicians, which runs it. 

Among the more celebrated exhibits of the 25,000 medical oddities are skulls, fetuses, a slice of a human face, a jar of picked human skin, section of a small intestine, a giant distended colon, a cancerous growth that was removed from President Grover Cleveland, a piece of the thorax of John Wilkes Booth, and much more. Gross, I know.

All was well until 2021, when pediatrician Mira Irons was hired as president, and she hired Kate Quinn as executive director.

Two Woke women, who soon decided to switch the museum’s focus to health and well-being. 

“We are actively moving away from any possible perception of spectacle, oddities, or disrespect of any type for the collections in our care,” wrote Quinn in an email to staff.

It was like a delicatessen saying, no more pastrami.

It was a rejection of Mutter’s core mission, because of what?

The “possible perception” that someone might be triggered. There was no suggestion that anyone had actually complained.

I wrote about the controversy at the time. 

Yes, there is a heightened sensitivity nowadays in museums about how artifacts were collected, sometimes unethically. That is a serious issue, not to be solved by destroying all collections. 

What makes this news now? The departure of executive director Quinn. President Irons departed in 2023.

The Inquirer reported the departure  of the last of the two reformers, did a decent roundup on the subject, but could not say if the departure of the Woke women would result in a return to Mutter’s historic macabre mission — “disturbingly informative.”

It isn’t for everybody. Neither is pastrami. 

I asked Mutter’s PR guy if the change in leadership meant a change back to Mutter’s original mission.

He said he’d prefer the new president and CEO, Larry Kaiser, answer the question.

So would I, but Kaiser did not get back to me before deadline. I would have also asked him if the board that hired the women did so understanding how they would destroy revamp Mutter’s exhibitions.

If yes, heads should roll. And be added to the collection.