'Mummies of the World' opens The Corner Gallery at Playhouse Square
Sep. 22—"Mummies of the World: The Exhibition" is a delicate endeavor in more ways than one.
The first exhibit to inhabit The Corner Gallery in the Playhouse Square District in Cleveland — a space at East 13th Street and Euclid Avenue only recently unveiled by Playhouse Square — the traveling "Mummies of the World" is "the largest exhibition of real mummies and related artifacts ever assembled and presents a never-before-seen collection of naturally and intentionally preserved mummies," according to a Playhouse Square news release.
A presentation of Playhouse Square, in partnership with World Heritage Exhibitions and MagicSpace Entertainment, the ticket show is open Thursdays through Sundays from Sept. 23 through Jan. 28.
"We are excited that this exhibit will allow us to further activate the Playhouse Square District," says David Green, Playhouse Square senior vice president of programming, in the release, "and give guests — both new and returning — different, exciting and memorable experiences when they come and visit."
As you would guess, its components must be treated with great care.
"The key to mummification is temperature and relative humidity," says Kathryn Leacock, interim president and CEO of the Buffalo Museum of Science, one of more than 10 lenders to the current version of the exhibition, which has existed for more than a decade.
In Cleveland, she says during a recent media preview, the encased get the benefit of Playhouse Square's sophisticated HVAC system.
"Of course, that gets even trickier when you're traveling," she says. "The artifacts go in a very specialized kind of truck that has climate control, that has air suspension. You want to limit movement; you want to limit fluctuation in temperature and RH."
Because of the sensitive nature of many of the samples, while photography is allowed, the use of a flash is prohibited.
(Guests also can use their smartphone, along with headphones, to listen to an online audio tour as they experience "Mummies of the World.")
The show also is delicate from a figurative sense in the sense that, as the news release acknowledges the presence of mummified remains of real people.
"Playhouse Square understands and acknowledges there are a variety of cultural and religious perspectives on the display of deceased individuals," it reads. "We display this special exhibition for educational purposes. Families with younger children who may not have previously experienced an exhibition like this one may wish to focus on its educational aspects."
It begins by introducing you to the remains of a baron and baroness — the Baron von Holz and the Baroness Schenck von Geiern — from 17th-century Germany who were discovered in Sommersdorf Castle in Ansbach.
"The baron and baroness are exhibited together, but they (were) not together," Leacock says. "They were not married. They are familial descendants, and they were found in a family crypt.
"(They were) unintentionally mummified," she continues. "The families were interred in the family crypt and just based on purely environmental factors — temperature, humidity, flow of air — they became mummified."
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As you progress through "Mummies of the World," you'll learn about the "natural recycling" the body does — "within a matter of hours, enzymes in the cells cause the soft tissues to start to decompose, or break down," reads one informational panel; mummy bundles — involving bodies being placed into the fetal position and wrapped in grass cords along with "essential items for the afterlife" and buried; and the "ancient Egyptian science" of "making mummies" in the hot-and-dry environment.
Related to that last subject, significant space is devoted to "MUMAB — The Maryland Mummy."
"MUMAB was the result of a partnership between an Egyptologist (Bob Brief of Long Island University) and an anatomist (Ron Wade of the University of Maryland) who got together to figure out and actually recreate how we believe the ancient Egyptians mummified their deceased," Leacock says.
Referring to the Egyptian funeral text known as the "Book of the Dead," she says, they used a donor cadaver from a University of Maryland program to attempt to replicate the process.
"Because of the research," a panel reads, "the scientists learned many things about ancient embalming. For example, the brain could not merely be pulled out through the nose, but had to be liquefied first so it could be poured out the nasal passages.
"Natron from Egypt — a natural mix of salt, washing soda and bicarbonate of soda — was packed inside and outside the body for 35 days. When the natron was removed, the body showed no signs of decomposition and had begun to look like an ancient Egyptian mummy."
The exhibition closes with three that do not. Michael Orlovitz, his wife, Veronica, and their 1-year-old son, Johannes, are among the mummies that were found in a church crypt in Vac, Hungary, many of them having been infected with tuberculosis. The three are dressed in period clothing, accompanying placards noting the clothes worn by mother and son are replicas of those in which they were buried.
"The idea (of ending the exhibition with them) is to reposition you, to say, 'These are people that had a family, that had names, they had children and husband and wives and partners," Leacock says, noting that because the church — as churches tend to do — kept good records, allowing for much knowledge about the family.
She returns to this larger theme at the end of the conversation.
"I just want people to remember that these are individuals," Leacock says. "Through science and the process, we learn those stories and that to me is what we're all about."
'Mummies of the World: The Exhibition'
When: Thursdays through Sundays Sept. 23 through Jan. 28.
Where: The Corner Gallery, 1305 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.
Tickets: $24,95, adults; $22.95, college students with student ID and those 60 and older; $19.95, ages 3 to 17; free, ages 2 and younger.
Info: PlayhouseSquare.org/Mummies.
