The Hall of Anthropogenesis. An exhibition history at the Phyletisches Museum Jena (GER)

Natural history museums tell the story of human evolution. The findings and errors of evolutionary biology have left their mark on the former exhibitions of these museums, as well as the attempts to appropriate knowledge about anthropogenesis for certain (political) purposes.
Using the example of the Phyletic Museum in Jena, I will show in my lecture how the exhibition display of anthropogenesis has changed since the museum was built in 1912. The rearrangements and commentaries on the museum’s objects show how the gestures of declaring supposedly certain knowledge are increasingly dissolving into the vagueness of uncertainty. The creators placed a genealogical tree above the entrance to the museum – an image that today must be seen as a disproved concept of evolutionary developments and a legitimation of racist ideas. Today, human evolution is depicted in the museum as an intertwined web with loose ends. Only very slowly have the representations of supposed ideas of progress been able to give way to current notions of diversity. Using film footage and archive documents, I will trace this in an exhibition history of anthropogenesis at the Phyletisches Museum.