Mütter Museum’s popular holiday market canceled, replaced with educational event

In what some see as another sign of a changing institution, the Mütter Museum will not hold its popular and unabashedly offbeat holiday market, Dr. Mütter’s Merry Emporium, this year.

Over the past three years, the Emporium had been a sought-after venue by artisans selling creations that fit in with the Mütter’s playfully macabre vibe.

Instead, on Sunday, Dec. 10, the museum will host Merriment at the Mütter, a new event with an educational emphasis.

Guests will see objects from Mütter’s collection that are not usually displayed, such as a wax model of a gangrenous hand and a pharmaceutical chest from an Antarctic expedition. They can also sip hot chocolate, create crafts, and participate in learning pop-up activities.

Some merchandise will be available for sale, including items from two local craftspeople whose work is sold in the museum gift shop.

The reasons behind the change are in dispute.

Mütter director Kate Quinn said doing away with the Emporium was not her idea.

“The staff approached me — I think it was early October — about changing it this year,” Quinn said. “They wanted to try something new and bring the focus back to the Mütter and its collections.”

Quinn added that the staff wanted to still have vendors, but decided to focus on vendors already with the gift shop.

“We agreed to move forward with this version of a holiday event,” she said.

However, staff members on the event committee that met this past summer “very much wanted to do” the Merry Emporium again this year as it had been done in the past but believed Quinn would not approve the kinds of counter-culture vendors that were mainstays of the event, said one staffer who was present and asked to remain anonymous.

“Rather than alienate our vendors by saying, ‘We’re having it,’ and then having to tell them, ‘You can’t come this year,’ which would be horrible vendor relations, and rather have an Emporium with scented candle vendors and that’s it, we decided we couldn’t have the Emporium this year,” said the staff member. “But not because we didn’t want to.”

Another committee member said restrictions would have been placed on the event “to the point that the event would have been unrecognizable.”

That staffer also said another factor in the ultimate decision to cancel the Emporium “was many of the vendors being vocally critical online of the changes being made to the museum.”

Quinn said she would have wanted to review and approve the vendors had there been an Emporium, but she said she hadn’t gone to the event last year when she was new to her post.

“I don’t really know exactly what the event was all about. … I know that it was very popular in its own right,” Quinn said.

Mischief at the Mütter, a popular Halloween event, was also canceled this year. The museum’s raucous and hot-ticket celebration was deemed inappropriate for a museum, reviewing its policy on human remains and making changes “focused on dignity and respect,” according to an email sent in September by Morgan Baird, interim chief operating officer of Mütter parent organization, the College of Physicians.

At the time, Baird attributed those opinions to a staff committee that met to discuss both events. However, some members of that committee, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to news media, said their team didn’t want to cancel Mischief but believed the current museum leadership would not allow an event anything like what it had been.

For some long-time Mütter supporters, the Emporium’s cancellation is further proof that this uniquely Philadelphia institution whose motto has long been “disturbingly informative” is being fundamentally altered.

Quinn said she is leaving the door open for future holiday season plans.

“We’ll see what happens,” she said. “Next year, if this isn’t successful, then maybe they’ll decide on a different way and bring a new proposal.”

Several dozen previous Emporium vendors were notified by the Mütter of the change around Halloween. Those contacted said that was late notice to restructure their plans for the prime holiday selling season. But even those who have found other seasonal markets to sell their crafts said they’re sorry that the Mütter’s Emporium has been canceled.

Aileen Loy, an Atlanta artist whose creations include eye-centered works and scissor necklaces, said she had scheduled her busy holiday vending season around the Emporium. Last year, she sold just about everything she brought.

Although she found a replacement venue, Loy was disappointed by the tone of the new event.

“It was like, this is more acceptable, more palatable,” she said. “ ‘We’re going to serve hot chocolate.’ Somehow that isn’t in keeping with what the Mütter is about. It seems like a very suburban, soccer-mom-idea of what the world is like.”

Megg Ochsenbein, a Montgomeryville artisan who sold the intricate framed butterflies of her Death Couture at Emporium, including the same type of moth made famous in the film Silence of the Lambs, said the event drew people “from far and wide. It was a sense of community. It was somewhere you could feel safe and accepted.

“I was so proud to say I was a vendor at the Mütter.”

Merriment at the Mütter, 2 to 7 p.m Sunday, Dec. 10, at the Mütter Museum, 19 S. 22nd St. Tickets: $5 (does not include museum admission). Information: muttermuseum.org or 215-563-3737.