May 10, 2025 - 11:53
Critical Disability Studies
Final Project
There Is No (Ab)Normal: Reimagining the Body Beyond the Display Case
Project Background:
The horrors of haunted houses with skeletons hanging eerily from the ceiling and staged dismemberment are somehow fun in a freaky way for many individuals. But the thrill subsides once you realize: this is not a haunted house. It is a museum and those skeletons are real human remains. Suddenly, the display’s curious entertainment becomes an unsettling spectacle.
The Mütter Museum has recently received backlash due to ethical concerns about the human remains in their museum as well as a lack of respect for individuals with disabilities. This project aims to critique the Mütter Museum, and also reimagine it through the lens of disability justice. The Mütter Museum, while claiming to be educational, often reinforces ableist frameworks by displaying and decontextualizing disabled bodies. This project offers an alternative crocheted art exhibit grounded in care and access, and incorporates tactile experiences and adequate history.
The Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia was founded by Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter in 1863. With the goal of improving and reforming medical education, Dr. Mütter accepted 1,700 “specimens” and hosted annual medical lectures. Unfortunately, this medical education was woven with ableist ideologies of what a “normal” vs “abnormal” body should look like. In fact, the idea of normalcy was actually constructed by eugenicist statisticians. Statistics applied the idea to populations to divide people into “standard and nonstandard subpopulations” (Davis et al., 2021). Applying these statistical measures to humans have had extremely detrimental consequences, especially in regards to envisioning the “ideal” body. In reality, there is no ideal body, but that is not the narrative shared at the Mütter museum.
Today, Mütter’s “teaching” collection displays the well-preserved collection of “anatomical specimens,” models, and medical instruments. The museum attempts to uphold the initial educational motivation behind the collection. In doing so, the museum claims to help the public understand the mysteries and beauty of the human body and also appreciate the history of diagnosis and treatment of disease. Instead, they seem to fall short in applying a modern perspective on the display.
There are many ethical issues with the Mütter Museum as it is exhibited today. Many of the displays of human remains were obtained non-consensually, especially from marginalized communities such as slaves and disabled individuals. Additionally, some remains are labeled in derogatory terms such as a skull on display that had belonged to an “idiot.” The museum draws on the innate human curiosity about the freakish and different, without sufficient context for the display nor respect for the lives of disabled individuals, past and present. The museum is currently reckoning with how their display is offensive, with many disability justice advocates calling for the removal of the human remains. However, it is important that we learn about the unfortunate history of medical practices and people with disabilities. This leads me to wonder: How can we learn from the human body without turning it into a spectacle?
Theoretical Framework for the project:
This project encourages us to challenge the idea of normalcy by viewing disability through lenses other than the traditional medical model. For example, a growing social movement within the disability community is reclaiming the term “crip” as an act of resilience and a way to express pride in their disability identity (Kirby, 2016). Rather than viewing it as a deficit, crip aesthetics pushes us to value imperfection in the human body. The Japanese term kintsugi also aligns with these sentiments (Risner, 2025). Kintsugi helps us embrace and celebrate “brokenness,” instead of concealing differences.
No two people, not even identical twins, are exactly the same. This individuality, whether one is disabled or non-disabled, should be embraced, not pathologized. The medical model of disability often reduces people to diagnoses, flattening their complexity and wholeness. In contrast, art offers a powerful medium to reclaim and celebrate uniqueness. The use of crochet in this exhibit is intentional: crocheting is a slow and imperfect process. It resists the clinical precision of medical displays. Crochet invites color, texture, and sensory engagement, making the artwork more accessible. But more importantly, it reframes the human body and disability beyond the medical model.
Exhibition:
Introduction Wall Text for Exhibition Panel
There Is No (Ab)Normal: Reimagining the Body Beyond the Display Case
Medium: Crochet, yarn
Senses: Sight, Touch, Sound (audio description)
The Mütter Museum claims to educate through its display of preserved human remains and medical anomalies. But what happens when education comes at the cost of consent, dignity, and narrative? What does it mean to stare at the bodies of disabled people stripped of their names, stories, and context? This exhibit is a critique and reimagining of the Mütter Museum.
Using crochet, a medium traditionally linked to care and slowness, I recreate recognizable body parts not for display, but for dialogue and touch. They are soft, colorful, and imperfect. Unlike the Mütter’s sterile glass cases, this work invites warmth, tactility, and the complexity of human existence.
Inspired by disability justice, crip theory, and aesthetics of imperfection, this exhibit highlights access and story over spectacle and pathology. There is no “normal,” only richness in the variation of human experience.
Brain
Materials: 100% acrylic magenta and light pink yarn
(Audio) Description:
The crocheted brain is round and soft, with textured ripples across the surface. Light pink yarn curls represent the brain's white matter, looping across a base of darker magenta, which represents the gray matter. Toward the lower bottom of the brain, a small crocheted sphere in light pink yarn represents the cerebellum. It is not anatomically precise, but layered and tangled.
Brains are often displayed in jars: sliced, labeled, and drained of narrative. This piece refuses dissection. It celebrates messiness, softness, and the mind-body relationship.
Heart
Materials: 100% acrylic magenta yarn and 85%/15% recycled cotton/polyester indigo yarn
(Audio) Description:
The heart is slightly lopsided. The use of two different types of yarn resulted in a large magenta chamber in the center and small indigo arteries and veins.
This crocheted heart resists the impulse to represent bodies as failures or flaws. This heart may pump to its own beat, but it keeps on pulsing to support each individual.
Lungs
Materials: 100% acrylic light pink and gray yarn
(Audio) Description:
The light pink crocheted lungs are sewn to a gray trachea at the center. The right and left lungs are asymmetrical, with irregular edges and uneven stitching.
Vitality and vulnerability are woven into each breath. These lungs do not strive for anatomical perfection but rather expand and deflate with each passionate stitch.
Sources:
Crip: A Story of Reclamation. (2016, July 27). Now Then Sheffield. https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/crip-a-story-of-reclamation
Davis, L. J., Sanchez, R., & Luft, A. (Eds.). (2021). The disability studies reader (Sixth edition). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Judkis, M. (2023, July 27). A museum’s historic human remains are now the center of an ethics clash. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/07/26/mutter-museum-controversy-philadelphia/
Kintsugi: Beauty in the Broken. (n.d.). Vaneetha Risner. Retrieved May 10, 2025, from https://www.vaneetha.com/journal/kintsugi-beauty-in-the-broken
Mütter Museum. (n.d.). Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Retrieved May 10, 2025, from https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/mutter-museum/