What is the dignified handling of human remains in a historical collection?
The Art Academy is one of many cultural institutions in Sweden that has human remains in its collections. These are skeletal parts that were previously used in the academy's anatomical teaching.
Today, research and important conversations about the ethics of how remains of this kind should be handled are ongoing. Both within the museum world and contemporary art, the question has come up. In October 2015, the State Historical Museums (SHMM) was commissioned by the government to make an overview of human remains at museums. The completed report shows that at least 66 Swedish museums have human remains in their collections. The report recommends, among other things, that national guidelines for the handling of human remains at museums in Sweden should be drawn up.
In a long-term project, the Academy of Arts investigates the future of the remains and the story they tell. During 2024 among other things, a seminar will be arranged.
Well into the 1900th century, anatomy was an obvious part of artistic education as well. They drew and studied from living models, anatomical planchres, models and plaster casts of body parts. Anatomy was part of the view of art that, ever since the Renaissance, held that the human body was the basis for all creation. During the 1800th and 1900th centuries, when notions of human races and hierarchical systems were established, art and art education therefore played an important role.
The Academy of Arts provided artistic education from its founding in 1735 until 1978, when the teaching part of the academy became its own institution in the form of the Royal The Academy of Arts. Anatomical teaching existed as early as the 1700th century and continued in various forms until 1973. Today, the academy manages everything from archival material, anatomical models to human remains in the form of skeletal parts that remain from this history.