Museums of Death

Museums are institutions that collect and display objects or artifacts of scientific, historic, cultural, or artistic value. Museums of death focus almost entirely on issues surrounding death, funerals, and memorialization in Western society, and on the objects produced as part of the mourning and memorialization processes. Since the 19th century, Europe, America, and many other countries have developed commercial enterprises surrounding funerals and mourning, while other societies and cultures have held onto traditional rituals of burial and memorialization. This entry describes collections that feature the wide range of death-related objects in different cultures and time periods in specialized museums of death.

Most museums of death are relatively new, having been founded within the past few decades. The reasons that this type of museum is now found to be more culturally acceptable are complex, but there are several factors to their growing popularity. Those factors include the deterioration of longstanding, primarily 20th-century taboos about public discussion of death and dying and the public displays of corpses, and an increased interest in the history of the rituals of burial and mourning.

An interesting point is that most of these museums do not explicitly call themselves “museums of death,” rather they choose names that nevertheless reflect their related focus, for example The Museum of Funeral Customs in Springfield, Illinois; The Museum of Mourning Art in Drexel, Pennsylvania; or The Funeral Museum in Vienna, Austria. Museumgoers clearly understand what kinds of exhibits they will see, and that these will be related to death and dying in some way. Some museums take a kitsch, pop-culture approach, using humor as part of their message—for example, the motto of The National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas is “Any day above ground is a good one.” In general, however, these museums do not attempt to glamorize, romanticize, or glorify death, as often happens in films, rather their focus is on presenting objects and information in a historically accurate and culturally interesting way to foster discussion about how modern societies have dealt with death, dying, and mourning.

Caskets

Typically, the most prominent display for any funeral museum is the collection of coffins and caskets. In America, until the 19th century, coffins were usually made by a local carpenter or cabinetmaker who made up a simple wooden box on demand. Later, as the preparation and display of the deceased was increasingly taken over from the family by commercially run funeral parlors, the coffin business also specialized. “Caskets,” or fancy coffins, became popular through clever marketing; these take their name from Renaissance jewelry boxes—an appealing name to the bereaved, evoking the thought of treating their beloved as they would a “precious gem.” Caskets often feature luxurious interior fabrics (e.g., silk), and ornamental hardware—handles and name plates—of brass, gold, or silver. Catalogs for this hardware dating from the 19th century are veritable treasure troves of 19th century design. Some museums, for example The National Museum of Funeral History (Houston, Texas), also display innovative coffins or oddities, for example the “cooling” coffin that, in the days before refrigeration, allowed for the inclusion of ice to help delay putrefaction. Other things related to funeral culture and burial, such as shrouds, are often also included in funeral museum exhibits.

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