Talk:Conservation and restoration of human remains

Lauren,

I’ve been eager to see the big Mummies exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, so I find your choice of topic very interesting. LACMA also has a couple of Egyptian mummies in its collection as well as a Tibetan bowl made from the top of a human skull. I think your outline provides an excellent structure for your article, and you have a good collection of references. Even though you note that you may remove the “Restoration/ Reconstruction” section, I still think you should address the question of what kinds of treatments conservators might have to perform on human remains. When is such work appropriate, and how does one go about doing it in a respectful way? I was also wondering about art or specimens that may contain hair, blood, or other body “parts” from people who are not deceased. Would you consider those types of objects “human remains”? Regardless, I think you would still have to conserve them the same way. I think your section on Cultural and Ethical Considerations can be a wealth of information; there’s just so much to discuss, and it involves not only conservators but really everyone involved in collections and curatorial. I think you might be able to find some good basic information on the issues involved in two of the texts from the Collections Management course: the MRM5, which discusses human remains in the articles about Collections Ethics (pp. 399-407) and NAGPRA (pp. 448-457), and Marie C. Malaro and Ildiko Pogany DeAngelis’ A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections. Ednla (talk) 03:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Lauren, this looks like it is going to be a great article, and it seems well thought out with quite a few references already. I appreciate the inclusion of cultural issues regarding institutions holding human remains, and the need to be aware of proper handling methods or the need to return the remains to the communities from which they came. One thing I will suggest is moving the 'types of human remains' to be the first main section of the article so that readers can learn what might be included in a museum's collection before moving on to how to take care of those remains, especially if the type of remains has any impact on the care needed to preserve them. Looking at the list of types of remains is interesting, as I never really consider more than bones being held or displayed in museums, but really there are so many other types. Are you going to give specific examples of some human remains in museums, either that show good preservation or perhaps that show very poor preservation? I think that might be interesting and add an aspect of this work in the real world. I also recently listened to an interview that discussed to some degree the different types of mummies and how Egyptian types, well prepared without internal organs, are not as affected my moisture as those that still have all of their internal organs and bacteria to go with it, so I was wondering if you will be address the differences in the original preparations of some of these remains and how it can affect what methods need to be taken to care for the objects? Jaimikaye (talk) 21:39, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Lauren, it looks like you have a well thought out outline and seem to cover a lot about human remains in museums. I personally do not have any addition remarks from the ones that Jamie has mentioned about. But I do have an additional resource for you, The Penn Museum. They have an excellent conservation blog that is updated daily and strictly focuses on the mummies. It is run by the conservators of the museums! I think it is worth a peek. Chris.

I really like how ambitious this article is looking. I think the title should be "Conservation and restoration of human remains" which matches other conventions, like conservation and restoration of silver objects. I don't think it has to be specific to museums as these principles would apply to all sorts of cultural institutions and even collectors. RichardMcCoy (talk) 00:53, 19 November 2015 (UTC)