The decision to find a “respectful final disposition” for human remains used for a 19th-century book comes amid growing scrutiny of their presence in museum collections.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13642360

The decision to find a “respectful final disposition” for human remains used for a 19th-century book comes amid growing scrutiny of their presence in museum collections.

Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University’s libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.

For years, the volume — a 19th-century French treatise on the human soul — was brought out for show and tell, and sometimes, according to library lore, used to haze new employees. In 2014, the university drew jokey news coverage around the world with the announcement that it had used new technology to confirm that the binding was in fact human skin.

But on Wednesday, after years of criticism and debate, the university announced that it had removed the binding and would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”

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  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    3•8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Of the roughly 20 million books in Harvard University’s libraries, one has long exerted a unique dark fascination, not for its contents, but for the material it was reputedly bound in: human skin.

    Harvard also said that its own handling of the book, a copy of Arsène Houssaye’s “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls,” had failed to live up to the “ethical standards” of care, and had sometimes used an inappropriately “sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone” in publicizing it.

    In a statement, Harvard’s president at the time, Lawrence S. Bacow, apologized for the university’s role in practices that “placed the academic enterprise above respect for the dead and human decency.”

    The survey also highlighted items whose origins lay outside the context of colonialism and slavery, including ancient funerary urns that may contain ashes or bone fragments, early-20th-century dental samples and, at Houghton Library, the Houssaye book.

    The letter, signed by Needham and two other leaders of the group, said that the library had a history of handling the book “brutishly on a regular basis, as an attention-grabbing, sensationalized display item.” It cited in particular a 2014 blog post about the scientific testing, since removed, which called the research “good news for fans of anthropodermic bibliopegy, bibliomaniacs and cannibals alike.”

    In a list of frequently asked questions released with the university’s announcement, Tom Hyry, the director of Houghton, and Anne-Marie Eze, its associate librarian, said that the library had first imposed restrictions on access in 2015, and instituted a full moratorium on any new research in February 2023.

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