The Mutter Museum focuses on public health with its new exhibit on homelessness

A new exhibition that aims to create a greater understanding of the homelessness crisis through the power of art and information opens Saturday at Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum.

“Unhoused: Personal Stories and Public Health” marries years of work by Toronto-based photographer Leah den Bok and Dallas-based artist Willie Baronet with the science and research expertise of Rene Najera, public health chair of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Mütter’s parent group, and Rosie Frasso, a College Fellow and educator whose students also contributed to the exhibit.

“It explores the difficult truth that simply being without a home is a dangerous health condition,” said Mütter director Kate Quinn.

“Unhoused,” which has been about a year in the making, is the first exhibit Quinn “green-lighted” since taking the helm in September 2022.

Shifting the museum’s focus to “health not death” has become the buzz phrase for the evolving Mutter — all of which has been very unpopular with many core supporters of the institution. Last spring, in an interview with The Inquirer, Quinn cited the upcoming “Unhoused” as the kind of health-oriented effort she wanted the museum to do more of.

“Moving forward certainly I think we’ll have more special exhibitions that can focus on contemporary issues,” said Quinn at Friday’s press preview.

The new exhibit features about 40 striking black-and-white photographs that den Bok took of men, women, and children who were experiencing homelessness in several countries, including the United States.

On the opposite wall are over 80 of about 2,200 cardboard signs that Baronet bought over the last 30 years from people who were unhoused.

One of those signs had belonged to a man named Edward Dunn, a Philadelphian who was unhoused when Baronet met him in 2014. Since then, Baronet said, Dunn has turned his life around. He’s several years sober, owns a home, and speaks to Frasso’s classes. The two men are friends.

His sign, part of the new exhibit, reads in part: “What if god occasionally visits Earth disguised as a homeless guy panhandling to see how charitable we are? Completely hypothetical of course.”

Najera said, as the early College members came together as health leaders when Philadelphians were suffering from yellow fever, this exhibit shows some things we can do about this “societal issue.”

“Awareness is one of the things we can do. Advocacy is another one that we can do. And then most of all, compassion, humanizing people who are going through this situation so that we see ourselves in them,” he said.

That he said, “is sticking with the mission of the college of advancing medicine, advancing public health, and doing something (to bring) this issue to the forefront of people’s minds.”

Toward end, he said there will be other programming during the several months of the exhibit, including likely panel discussions with advocates and people experiencing homelessness.

Quinn said there may also be service projects with groups like Project HOME.

The new exhibit is separate from the ongoing reviews of content and public feedback of the museum as a whole, Quinn said. The medical history museum has a world-renowned collection of biological specimens.

“That’s all part of the Postmortem project and all of the feedback that we’re getting, which is going to take at least a year, if not more,” she said.

“Unhoused” runs through Aug. 5.