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Death Like You've Never Seen It Before | Joanna Ebenstein | TEDxNewYork

The speaker argues that modern American attitudes toward death are unique and often taboo, suggesting that examining historical, cultural, and artistic depictions of death—from *memento mori* objects to contemporary festivals like Day of the Dead—reveals ways to approach mortality that could enrich contemporary life. The speaker illustrates this by detailing her own research, which led to co-founding The Morbid Anatomy Museum to encourage a more open dialogue about death.

## Speakers & Context
- Unnamed speaker; relates personal history and academic research to art and culture.
- Personal background: Grew up in California in the 1980s; felt unpopular due to interest in "darkness and death."
- Childhood influence: Grandparents were both Holocaust survivors and studied medicine, instilling a "no-nonsense approach to life, death and the body."
- Personal revelation: Grandmother once told the speaker, "she wanted to die, that she was ready to go," calling the speaker her "father confessor."
- Current Goal: To prompt people to question their own attitudes about death, showing that modern approaches are unique to our time and place.

## Theses & Positions
- American modern discourse around death is an exception to how other cultures have handled the "universal problem" of mortality.
- The way we currently treat death is characterized by avoidance and taboo, making it seem like a problem to be solved rather than a continuous part of life.
- Reclaiming the notion of the "morbid" is necessary because actively contemplating death—even if it's scary—is preferable to ignoring it.
- By making peace with death, humanity might paradoxically be able to live the "richest, fullest lives possible."

## Concepts & Definitions
- **Memento mori:** Objects created specifically to remind viewers that they will die, with the hope that they will live a holy life and thus avoid the fires of hell.
- **Ossuaries/Charnel houses:** Places where bones of the dead are artistically displayed (e.g., Sedlec Chapel, San Bernardino alle Ossa in Milan).
- **Corpus sancti:** Effigies of saints that house their sacred remains (e.g., an arm bone).
- **Incorruptible saints:** Bodies whose lack of decay is seen as a sign of sanctity (e.g., Saint Catherine of Siena).
- **Day of the Dead:** Mexican ceremony, a hybrid of indigenous practices and Catholic All Saints'/All Souls' Day, featuring sugar skulls, skeleton costumes, and altars for the deceased.

## Mechanisms & Processes
- **Research technique:** Researching and photographing various historical and cultural practices dealing with death.
- **Medical Museum function:** Housing human remains or simulacra to educate the public (medical students and general public).
- **Narrative function of the museum:** Blurring lines between art and science, death and beauty, religion and medicine, and education and spectacle.
- **Cultural Comparison:** Comparing the taboo surrounding death in modern America with practices in Europe (17th century plague), Mexico, and Seoul (Chuseok).

## Timeline & Sequence
- **California Youth:** Interest in death; lived with grandparents in Peekskill and Mahopac, New York.
- **Early Career Focus:** Researching practices of death when they seemed "bizarre or morbid."
- **European Travel:** Introduction to *memento mori* objects in Salzburg Cathedral.
- **Victorian Age:** Popularity of post-mortem photographs due to high child mortality (three in five children died before adulthood).
- **Naples:** Observation of women cleaning and caring for abandoned skulls in Fontanelle cemetery.
- **17th/18th Century:** Peak popularity of *memento mori* and religious displays of remains in Europe.
- **Mexican Day of the Dead:** Celebration continuing today with public altars and skeleton dress.
- **2012 (Halloween):** Speaker met Tracy Hurley Martin while giving a talk on Santa Muerte.
- **2014:** Co-founding of The Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn, New York, with Tracy Hurley Martin.

## Named Entities
- **California:** Place where speaker grew up.
- **Peekskill and Mahopac, New York:** Location of summer visits with grandparents.
- **Europe:** Region where the speaker observed various historical practices regarding death.
- **Salzburg Cathedral:** Location where speaker first encountered *memento mori*.
- **Prague:** Location of Sedlec Chapel.
- **Milan:** Location of San Bernardino alle Ossa.
- **Palermo catacombs:** Located in Sicily; site where Capuchin monks display mummified bodies.
- **Saint Theresa in Rome:** Location used as an example of a saint's relic display.
- **Saint Catherine of Siena:** Example of an incorruptible saint.
- **Mexico:** Destination for research on the Day of the Dead.
- **Seoul:** Location visited for Korean Thanksgiving Day (Chuseok).
- **Fontanelle cemetery:** Ossuary in Naples where women display abandoned skulls.
- **Florence, Italy:** Location of the first public science museum, La Specola.
- **Brooklyn, New York:** Location where The Morbid Anatomy Museum was co-founded.
- **Queens:** Area containing a shop window display of Santa Muerte.

## Numbers & Data
- Speaker's age reference: 1980s.
- Grandparents' longevity: Over 60 years (for the grandmother's husband).
- Century of *memento mori* popularity: 17th century.
- Child mortality rate (Victorian era): Three in five children died before reaching adulthood.
- Number of body parts/relics viewed: Multiple examples given (e.g., *corpus sancti* = an arm bone, teeth).
- Period of study: Over 20 years.
- Year of museum co-founding: 2014.
- Year of event prompting meeting: Around Halloween 2012.

## Examples & Cases
- **Jewish skeletons:** Five jeweled skeletons located behind where the Von Trapps married at Salzburg Cathedral.
- **Post-mortem photos:** Portraits of dead nuns using human hair, popular when photography was expensive and child mortality was high.
- **Ossuary use:** Bones were seen as a temporary rental commodity, moved aside to make room for new bodies.
- **Capuchin display:** Mummifying and displaying bodies of wealthy individuals in their "Sunday best" in the 17th and 18th centuries.
- **Anatomical Venuses:** Full-sized wax women with real human hair and glass eyes, created in the 18th century for public education.
- **Napoleon III's object:** A table featuring a petrified human brain, blood, bile, liver, lung, and glands, centered on a petrified human foot and four human ears, created in 1866.
- **Honoré Fragonard's creation:** A beetle skeleton tableau called a "profane relic," created in the 17th century.
- **The Morbid Anatomy Museum:** Functioning as a physical library and exhibition space in the Gowanus area of Brooklyn.
- **Santa Muerte:** A form of devotion in Mexico where death is worshipped as a saint figure.

## Tools, Tech & Products
- **Morbid Anatomy:** A blog started by the speaker to organize research photographs and materials.
- **Morbid Anatomy library:** The physical library opened in the Gowanus area, allowing public access to bibliography materials.
- **Petrified human brain/organs:** Artifact used as an example centerpiece (1866).
- **Anatomical Venus:** Full-sized wax figures with real human hair and glass eyes, originally created for the La Specola museum.

## References Cited
- **La Specola:** The first truly public science museum in Florence, Italy, which still houses the original anatomical Venus.
- **All Saints'/All Souls' Day:** Catholic festival framework for Day of the Dead.
- **Chuseok:** Korean Thanksgiving Day ceremony in Seoul, analogous to Day of the Dead.
- **Santa Muerte:** Deity/devotion figure in Mexico, translating to "holy death."

## Trade-offs & Alternatives
- **Approach to death:** Modern American attitude (taboo, avoidance) versus historical/cultural approaches (public display, ceremony, ritualized viewing).
- **Museum function:** Moving from a private research tool (blog) to a public educational institution (The Morbid Anatomy Museum).
- **Purpose of *memento mori*:** The historical goal of avoiding hellfire (holy life) versus the speaker’s proposed secular goal of *carpe diem*.

## Methodology
- **Artistic/Academic Research:** Traveling to various global sites to study physical objects, rituals, and cultural practices related to death.
- **Material Collection:** Photographing and collecting artifacts (relics, skeletons, prosthetics) for documentation.
- **Museum Curation:** Creating a public educational space (The Morbid Anatomy Museum) to display this material.

## Conclusions & Recommendations
- The speaker recommends approaching death with a conscious understanding, treating it as a subject worthy of study, much like art or medicine.
- The primary goal of the Morbid Anatomy Museum is to make the public question their current, often superficial, attitudes towards mortality.
- Recommendation to engage with the concept of "making friends with death" or "making peace with death."

## Implications & Consequences
- The longevity and advances in medicine mean that for many Americans, death is emotionally and physically further away than ever before, potentially leading to denial.
- The tradition of making death a public spectacle—through art, commerce, or ritual—is shown to be a universal human response.

## Verbatim Moments
- "How did it become taboo to talk about, as I saw it, just about the most important thing you could say to another human being?"
- "Memento mori are essentially objects created for the sole purpose of reminding viewers that they will die, with the hope that they will live a holy life and thus avoid the fires of hell."
- "They say three in five children died before reaching adulthood."
- "On this day, children are given sugar skulls with their names written on them, and children, adults, and sometimes even pets are dressed as skeletons."
- "I think that it's because they blur a lot of our lines between things like art and science, death and beauty, religion and medicine and education and spectacle."
- "The most bizarre, perplexing, fascinating and seductive was the anatomical Venus."
- "What I would like to do, one of my goals... is to get people to question our own attitudes about death, to show via a preponderance of examples from other times and places that the way we think about death today is unique to our own time and place."
- "doesn't it seem more morbid - at least it does to me - not to think about death?"
- "Perhaps we have something to learn from other eras and other cultures, and maybe it is by making friends with death, or the very least making peace with death, that we might paradoxically be able to live the richest, fullest lives possible."