A popular but controversial diorama the Carnegie Museum of Natural History displayed for museum-goers for more than 120 years will be permanently removed from public view, due to a newly enacted human-remains policy, museum officials said Thursday.
The Oakland museum’s move, in the works for several years, comes amid debate nationwide about museums’ public display of human artifacts and the friction between historical and contemporary depictions of race.
The diorama — “Lion Attacking a Dromedary,” which shows two Barbary lions attacking a North African courier riding a camel — was pulled from its display in 2020, after the museum had shared it publicly since 1899. A 2017 X-ray revealed the courier’s intricately detailed face was created using a real human skull and jaw, triggering a modern-day ethical discussion about consent, colonialism and methods of displaying human remains.
“It is first and foremost about human remains,” said Gretchen Baker, the natural history museum’s director since April 2021. “Is it our place to display these items? I think the answer is ‘No.’ My role at this point is to do right by this individual … and return that individual to its homeland.”
“Like policies are living documents, museums are living institutions,” said Baker, an Illinois-bred industry veteran who came to Pittsburgh after five years and two Los Angeles-area museums at a 19-year tenure at The Field Museum in Chicago. “And that often means that exhibitions need to change. Museums are not static. They are a product of their time.”
A task force of Carnegie staff consulted with industry experts and drafted the human remains policy, the museum’s first, over several years, Baker said.
Related:
• Carnegie diorama back on display
• Carnegie Museum hiding famous ‘Lion Attacking a Dromedary’ diorama from view
• Editorial: Carnegie diorama should represent evolution of science
On Aug. 30, a governance committee of the museum’s board of trustees unanimously approved the policy. Last week, the museum separated the courier mannequin’s head from the diorama and removed the skull and jaw. It will never again be put on public display.
Created by 19th century French taxidermist Edouard Verreaux and his brother, the diorama had become quite popular in Pittsburgh. In a 2015 marketing poll, it came in second behind the “Dippy” dinosaur statue as visitors’ favorite attraction.
Other museum policies
The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is not tackling this issue in a vacuum.
Earlier this week, the Penn Museum in Philadelphia updated its human remains policy, declaring the museum will no longer exhibit exposed human remains. A public report released in 2021 recommended the change, officials said.
Some Penn Museum items — such as mummified persons in stone coffins, which contain human body parts — can be presented, but there will be no more bones, hair or tissue, spokeswoman Jill DiSanto told the Tribune-Review on Thursday.
“Prioritizing human dignity and the wishes of descendant communities are the governing principles behind this essential institution-wide update,” said Penn Museum director Christopher Woods. “Confronting our institutional history tied to colonial collection practices requires continuous examination and assessment of our policies. It is our moral, ethical and social responsibility.”
Conversation about displaying human remains acquired questionably also stirred in Pittsburgh in October 2007, when “Bodies: The Exhibition” opened at the SportsWorks building of Carnegie Science Center on the North Shore.
The touring exhibition, which debuted in Tampa Bay in 2005, displayed 15 Chinese cadavers, 200 internal organs and other human specimens, which some dubbed morbid exploitation.
In May 2008, the company behind that exhibit agreed to a settlement with the New York state attorney general’s office and admitted it couldn’t prove its bodies weren’t Chinese prisoners who might have been tortured or executed. The company promised refunds to those who saw the exhibit.
Debate about human remains — and their connection to European colonialism in the 19th century — goes further back.
In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a law that requires U.S. museums to address the issue of displaying human remains related to North America’s indigenous people.
That law also mandated that ownership of indigenous human remains discovered after Nov. 16, 1990 must be returned to “the lineal descendants of the Native American.”
Diorama drama
In 2017, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History refurbished the diorama and moved it out of the hall of North African mammals to a more prominent spot near the museum’s Forbes Avenue entrance.
Removing the diorama in 2020 intersected with then-recent events related to systemic racism and the police killings of Black people, said museum director Stephen Tonsor, who preceded Baker, in an interview at that time with the Tribune-Review. Museum officials also changed the diorama’s title from “Arab Courier Attacked by Lions” to “Lion Attacking a Dromedary.”
That same year, the Carnegie responded to accusations of historical inaccuracies and racism by sponsoring a public symposium to discuss the diorama. Museum officials later determined the diorama presented a “stereotyped, colonialist misrepresentation of North Africa and the Middle East,” Tonsor said.
An editorial published this July in the magazine “Curator” claimed the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, which previously owned the diorama, deemed the artwork “unscientific” as early as 1898.
Bound for destruction, industrialist Andrew Carnegie purchased it in 1899 for $50 — then about 10% of a white man’s average annual salary, author Jessica Landau wrote. Carnegie paid $45 to ship it from New York to Pittsburgh so it could be displayed in his then-new museum.
“The historical record does confirm that the Verreaux brothers were comfortable with objectification of human remains for their work,” Landau wrote.
The acquisition of the Carnegie diorama’s skull most likely was illicit and possibly considered unethical — even in the late 1800s, Landau said. Records have shown the Verreaux family might have robbed graves of individuals killed in imperial wars.
A Verreaux work titled “El Negro of Banyoles,” once displayed by a Catalonian museum, was repatriated in 2000 to Botswana, where the remains have been recognized formally as a national monument.
‘An educational process’
Only two Carnegie Museum of Natural History exhibits displayed recently include human remains; both have been removed from public view, officials said. In addition to “Lion Attacking a Dromedary,” there previously were human remains displayed in the museum’s Hall of Ancient Egypt.
But, Baker added, the natural history museum does own “remains of several hundred individuals.”
That’s because, in past decades, the museum became an unofficial repository for human remains excavated for urbanization and highway construction in Pennsylvania, Baker said.
The museum, however, does not own any human remains stolen from graves or used for questionable research, she stressed.
“This is a major issue in museums right now,” Baker said. “This has been an educational process for all of us.”
Tonsor, the former museum director, told the Trib in 2020 that the Carnegie didn’t have a policy prohibiting it from displaying “Lion Attacking a Dromedary.”
Baker said Thursday she is pleased that has changed.
“(Our policies) are a living document, like most policies,” Baker said. “We are periodically revisiting that policy and making sure it reflects current conversations ,,, and see how it needs to be revised.”
Justin Vellucci is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Justin at [email protected].
