In the past decade museum professionals and academics found themselves struggling with one question: should we display and research the human remains that we have in collections? And if yes, what is the ethical way to do so? Still today, the discussion is ongoing with no one answer in sight - most likely because the question is not an easy one – but also opening up, to comprehend different categories of human remains and diverse situations. But there is one stakeholder that is seldomly interrogated on this topic: museum public, or better yet publics. This talk will present the opinions of some museum publics' through the results of three visitors surveys.
Dr. Nicole Crescenzi is an archaeologist and a Guest Scholar at Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca, where she obtained her Ph.D. in Analysis and Management of Cultural Heritage. She is a member of the Research Unit LYNX – Centre for the Interdisciplinary Analysis of Images, Contexts, Cultural Heritage. She has been a guest researcher at the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies for more than one year and at Stockholm University for three months. She has multiple experiences in the field, both as an archaeologist and with undertaking visitors' surveys. Her current research focuses on the display of human remains in museums, intertwining different perspectives, specifically those of museum professionals and visitors