The collections at the Earth and Mineral Sciences Museum & Art Gallery at the Pennsylvania State University have included radioactive minerals since the museum was founded 128 years ago. This collection is well documented, although it was discovered in 2023 that the radioactive levels in the collection’s stores were at an unsafe level. The museum began working with the Environmental Health and Safety department on campus to mitigate and control the radioactive levels. Step one was to pinpoint and remove the minerals to a secure offsite campus storage facility until the museum can obtain proper storage equipment. Step two has been to survey the remaining collections of fine art and historic equipment for additional radioactivity. In this paper, we will talk about the radioactive collections, proposed mitigation, historic equipment, surprises, and this project’s impact on faculty, staff, and students who work with these collections. We will also address public reaction from nonchalant to visceral fear and some programming that serves to contextualize the collection through arts and humanities practices.

Valerie Innella Maiers

Some areas of science, and the instruments used in them, are inextricably linked with the death or pain of animals. This is particularly the case in instruments relating to biological and medical fields, though the link may be easy to overlook, such as instrument used to fuse new nuclei into 277 egg cells in the creation of one of our museum's most iconic exhibits: Dolly the cloned sheep.

The reactions of people, both staff and visitors, to this aspect of these instruments varies significantly, and can depend on context, expectations for what they will encounter, and personal feelings. For instance, a Sherrington decerebrator, a guillotine used on anaesthetised cats, occasionally gives rise to a reaction from someone which is more strongly negative than their reaction to The Maiden, a guillotine used for beheading convicted people in Edinburgh in 1564 – 1710.

In the 2022 exhibition Anatomy: a Matter of Death and Life we paid great consideration to how we acknowledged the many, mostly unnamed, people whose bodies have been used in anatomical research and teaching. We discovered that several of the more squeamish reactions from visitors came from the unexpected sight of a dissected platypus.

The use of animals has been, and continues to be, vital in science. The ways in which mention of animal experimentation or testing are presented or encountered can give rise to very different reactions in different people; this is a consideration we are becoming increasingly aware of in our care of the associated instruments.