I first encountered the mummified remains during my first week as a Curatorial Intern at the Toledo Museum of Art. My fellow intern and I were given a tour of the museum and its storage facilities. Our first stop was in a large furniture storage room, when the registrar turned to her left and said promptly, “and here are the mummies.” I was definitely not expecting to see them as I did not know that they existed in the first place. The registrar continued into the story of how they got the museum, their previous exhibition display, and how they’re currently being cared for by conservators.
The registrar took great care in describing the mummified remains and offering up history and the difficulties of trying to either display or return them. Yet, I was still just so struck by their immediate appearance. I was not prepared on encountering human bodies during my basement tour of the storage facilities.
As we left, I distinctly remember feeling quite nauseous and turning away for a moment to collect myself before we moved on to the next room. This experience has really stuck with me. Whenever I had downtime during my internship, I would browse through the object files of the mummified remains and seek out information about them. By the time I was entering my capstone project, I knew I had to dive into the information more.