Cancel Culture Comes for Philly’s Weirdest Museum

Is a 9-foot human colon a symbol of colonialism? Don’t laugh. That question threatens to destroy a beloved and bizarre institution in Philadelphia. The Mütter Museum has housed medical oddities and arcana for 160 years. Yet a handful of woke elites are taking issue with its past and jeopardizing its future.

As a former president of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which operates the Mütter Museum out of its downtown headquarters, I have a special fondness for this institution. I also know how weird it is. Where else can you see a malignant tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland, pieces of Albert Einstein’s brain, and 139 human skulls, to name a few of the head- and often stomach-turning exhibits? Many people with unique conditions have donated their organs, and even their whole bodies, to the collection. It’s equal parts intriguing and educational, since the museum fosters medical research.

The Mütter Museum has called itself “disturbingly informative,” yet a small number of activists tar it as insufficiently progressive. For years they’ve accused the museum of reflecting “colonialist” and “racist” views.

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