September 9-15, 2004

art

The Matter with Mütter

Gretchen Worden turned an obscure collection of medical curiosities into an international cultural attraction. With her sudden death, what will happen to the Mütter Museum?

by Bruce Schimmel

Gretchen Worden put the Mötter Museum on the map. When Worden, the museum's director, arrived almost three decades ago, few people outside of medicine went into the basement of the College of Physicians to examine its collection of arcane pathology — including syphilitic skulls, backbones twisted by spina bifida and jars of deformed fetuses.

Now the Mütter, at 22nd and Ludlow, ranks among Philadelphia's top dozen tourist attractions, pulling in some 62,000 visitors yearly. With Worden's unexpected death on Aug. 2, the Mütter's owners, the financially troubled College of Physicians, are faced with the question of how to exhibit the museum's wonders to its audience.

At issue is how the history of medicine should be told. Is medicine a science, whose progress should be charted? Or is medicine more of an art, whose story should be understood in a broad, cultural context?

Worden was trained as an anthropologist, and her humanist approach to medicine put her at odds with those who preferred a narrower definition of the Mütter's mission. But in recent years, with the collapse of the college's medical consumer outreach program and with the departure of an openly unsupportive CEO, it seemed like Worden had won the battle. Her sudden death, however, raises the question of whether the Mütter will continue to break new cultural terrain.

By every account, Worden was a charming, learned and delightful person — traits she needed to assuage those who found the anthropologist's work objectionable. Worden's infamous calendars — which artistically but graphically displayed human deformity using objects from the Mütter's collection — were "an outdated reflection of who we are," as college spokesman Dick Levinson put it to City Paper in 1996. The college, Levinson said, could not pursue more "important things" while "simultaneously involved in peddling a calendar which, to a lot of people, really smacks of the strange and bizarre."

(City Paper contacted Levinson to request staff interviews and to obtain a copy of the college's public audit. Levinson declined. However, many college staffers, fellows, consultants and artists agreed to speak on background, and the college's current financials were obtained from Harrisburg's Bureau of Charitable Organizations.)

But just what are those "important things"? The college's original, 18th-century mission on the forefront of medicine had been long abandoned. Fortunately, along the way, they accumulated a huge legacy of medical artifacts and books.

Maintaining a library and museum is expensive, however, and the health of the college's balance sheet has declined in recent years as the college cut into its endowment. Its biggest disappointment recently has been the collapse of its medical consumer outreach program, the C. Everett Koop Community Health and Information Center, begun in 1998. CHIC was envisioned as a walk-in medical library for the general public, but in the Internet age, it proved to be largely irrelevant. Once staffed six days a week, the center is now a museum shop. What's left of the service are two bookcases of medical references, an unplugged computer and a display of Koop memorabilia — most notably, a mannequin dressed in the former surgeon general's white dress uniform. The CHIC venture cost hundreds of thousands to set up, and in 2002, it made less than $400.

The CHIC Web site is still online, and its listings are updated. But consumers who call for help are directed to the Northeast Regional Library, where a kiosk is staffed part-time by volunteers.

Still, the college pursues its mission as a contemporary public health resource — a goal endorsed by many college fellows, many of whom are accomplished and prominent medical doctors.

Dues from fellows account for only about 10 percent of the college's $3 million yearly budget, and the college estimates that only 200 to 300 of its 1,500 fellows are "actively engaged." But the fellowship is still very influential. Many fellows are elderly, and the college has enjoyed large bequests.

It has been said that doctors are lucky: They get to bury their mistakes. As a historical medical museum, the job of the Mütter is, in effect, to unbury the past. The collection contains thousands of real-life examples of medicine's sometimes artless past. The practices they document — some the best of their time — now seem crude, quaint, even cruel. It is this issue of how best — how delicately, if you will — to present medicine's past that makes the museum so vexing to some in the college.

As the college's consumer program declined, the museum climbed to the status of a cultural icon. Not only has it become a top tourist attraction, it also became the college's second-largest source of earned income. Bringing in more than fellowship dues, Mütter Museum admission receipts are surpassed only by rental fees for medical conferences, weddings and bar mitzvahs.

But streams of visitors and partiers are taking their toll on the college's classic wood and marble interior. The place looks worn. Its heating and air conditioning are inadequate. With an ongoing operating deficit, the college continues to defer maintenance. In a recent visit to its library, with its vaulted, two-story ceiling, a large chunk of plaster fell to the carpet.

Museum costs continue to outpace income. And despite a recent admission hike, the best way to close the gap and presumably improve its facilities is to seek grants that, for the moment, the museum is not qualified to pursue. That is because the Mütter was never accredited.

Worden was working on getting accreditation from the American Association of Museums when she died. And there is every indication that the college will continue to pursue that goal, which is estimated to take at least two years.

In the wake of Worden's death, there is speculation that the college will publish another calendar — which for some is a harbinger for her continuing legacy. But on the other side, an unsigned article in the fellows newsletter argues for the need to provide "the students, young adults, family groups with no medical background," a "different, focused educational approach" to the museum's exhibits.

And so the question remains: In cleaning up the museum's facilities, will the significance of the artifacts also be sanitized? At the moment, the Mütter's owners are not saying.

There will be a memorial service for Gretchen Worden will be held Sun., Sept. 12, 2 p.m. at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 S. 22nd St.