What Should Museums Do With the Bones of the Enslaved?
As one museum has pledged to return skulls held in an infamous collection, others, including the Smithsonian, are reckoning with their own holdings of African-American remains.
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has announced that it will open a notorious collection of 1,300 human skulls, including some from enslaved people, to repatriation claims.Credit.Universal Images Group/Getty Images
April 20, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET
The Morton Cranial Collection, assembled by the 19th-century physician and anatomist Samuel George Morton, is one of the more complicated holdings of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
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April 20, 2021 During his Global Research Symposium presentation “Snails Over Time,” Paul Callomon, manager of the Academy of Natural Sciences’ Malacology Department, showed a snail shell that has been partially dissolved.
As part of Drexel University’s 2021 “Climate Year” initiative to support and advance ongoing and new climate work and sustainable solutions at all levels of the University, the Office of Global Engagement invited Drexel researchers and international colleagues to virtually convene and share their research and work measuring, addressing and finding solutions for climate change.
Held on April 15, the 2021 Climate Year: Global Research Symposium featured five-minute flash presentations from 15 Drexel faculty and professional staff (from six colleges and schools and the Academy of Natural Sciences) and their work related to the global climate crisis. Faculty from international partner institutions also presented, including those
Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dozens of human skulls of Black people some hundreds of years old will be returned to their communities of origin for reburial, according to a commitment by the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.
On Monday, the Penn Museum issued both an apology for possessing the skulls in its historic Morton Collection and outlined a plan to repatriate them.
“The Penn Museum and the University of Pennsylvania apologize for the unethical possession of human remains in the Morton Collection,” wrote Dr. Christopher Woods, who became the new director of Penn Museum on April 1. “It is time for these individuals to be returned to their ancestral communities, wherever possible, as a step toward atonement and repair for the racist and colonial practices that were integral to the formation of these collections.”
This is the latest development in Drexel s commitment to sustainability which was one of the goals of the university s Climate Year plan. The plan made combating climate change a central part of Drexel s institutional practices, curriculum, research and civic engagement.
Now that it s a part of the UC3, Drexel will be able to share resources, relationships and strategies with other member schools to help tackle the climate crisis.
The COVID-19 lockdown caused greenhouse gas emissions to decline in 2020, but they are already back to pre-pandemic levels. The United Nations called 2021 a crucial year in fighting climate change.
The UC3 is an alliance of more than 20 research universities working to build climate solutions and community resilience. It s administrator Second Nature runs the Climate Leadership Network, which hundreds of American colleges are a part of, including Drexel.