I had this conversation the other day with a colleague from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. We both agreed that lately there seems to be a lot of dialogue, events, art installations, etc…based on the themes of death and mortality, art and anatomy, and the cultural connotations of death. So far, for 2016 there are multiple conferences coming up on death, death collections, and even biological fluids and their alternative uses. I have to say, I am excited about this for many reasons. First, as someone who has worked with human remains collections for several years, it is good to see more transparency about collections, their importance, their accessibility, and the concerns of visibility, ethics, and indigenous rights related to them. Second, I have also been excavating human remains for a very long time, in various countries, and the discourse about best practice has also increased with more viewpoints being heard about public access and reburial. In general though, I think we are becoming less disconnected with death and more aware of our mortality. There are new and innovative ways in which we are looking at treating our dead out of concerns for the environment, lack of cemetery space, changing belief systems and plain ole’ creativity. For now, these are just musings as I am preparing for my ‘Rethinking the Dead’ day course I am teaching here in Cambridge. I will be posting further on this next week with some good references for anyone interested. Below is a list of some events coming up (and I will certainly be attending many of these)!
DeadtoRites 