Facing Scrutiny, a Museum That Holds 12,000 Human Remains Changes Course

The American Museum of Natural History said it would address its collecting of remains, which stretched into the 1940s and included practices now viewed as abusive and racist.

The American Museum of Natural History is planning to overhaul its stewardship of some 12,000 human remains, the painful legacy of collecting practices that saw the museum acquire the skeletons of Indigenous and enslaved people taken from their graves and the bodies of New Yorkers who died as recently as the 1940s.

The new policy will include the removal of all human bones now on public display and improvements to the storage facilities where the remains are now kept. Anthropologists will also spend more time studying the collection to determine the origins and identities of remains, as the museum faces questions about the legality and the ethics of its acquisitions.

“Figuring out the answers to exactly what we have here, and how to actually describe that as completely as we can, is something that is important to do moving forward,” said Sean M. Decatur, who became the museum’s president in April.