Are modern-day sensibilities altering the way that museums in the UK display artefacts such as Egyptian mummies?

From:
Independent

The curse of the vanishing mummies
Museums have been hiding away priceless collections of human remains, for ideological reasons
By Tiffany Jenkins
Wednesday, 16 February 2011

Egyptian mummies used to be among the most popular displays in British museum collections. But their days as a visitor attraction may be numbered. Increasingly they are being secreted away by curators, hidden away from the public without consultation.

In the coming year, Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery will publish its first policy specifically on the use and display of human remains. It is clear from the draft that staff are increasingly sensitive about exhibits of ancient bodies and skeletons. Recommendations include erecting signs to “alert” visitors that such material is on display – and reconsidering whether to show it at all.
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In the past, the British Museum has suggested to Greece that as a solution to the dispute over the Elgin Marbles, they will send the Greeks high quality copies. In the mind of the British Museum, this seems to solve the situation & anyone who rejects this offer is ungrateful. At the same time though it raises a new question of why the British Museum isn’t happy to keep the copies & return the originals.

From:
The National

Tutankhamun’s replica treasures in Manchester
Ben East
Last Updated: Nov 3, 2010

It’s quite a sight. The golden treasures of King Tutankhamun’s tomb look as arresting as they may have been on the day archaeologists happened across his virtually intact resting place in 1922. There are statues, chests and the pièce de résistance , the glittering death mask that caused the man who first discovered the tomb, Howard Carter, to remark breathlessly: “We were astonished by the beauty and refinement of the art… the impression was overwhelming.”

Except they’re not the originals. The Tutankhamun – His Tomb And His Treasures touring exhibition, just opened in an unlovely corner of a Manchester shopping complex, is instead stocked with costly reproductions of some of the most famous archaeological artefacts of all time.
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