A Funeral Museum at Death’s Door
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — A week or so ago, Duane Marsh noticed an elderly couple from Iowa standing hesitantly at the door of the Museum of Funeral Customs, a shrine here to embalming tools, coffins and other artifacts of the rites of death.
“This is his idea, not mine,” Mr. Marsh recalled the woman saying, as she pointed at her husband. “I’m not sure I want to go in.”
Mr. Marsh, the executive director of the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, which operates the museum, was able to convince the woman that it was really not such a ghoulish place, and then led the couple on a tour.
A stone’s throw from Lincoln’s tomb, this unusual cultural repository is an unmistakable reminder that everyone’s days are numbered. Now it seems the same might be true of the museum itself.
Unable to attract enough visitors — the Iowa woman is apparently not the only one who gets the creeps about this place — the museum is struggling to stay alive. The curator position has been eliminated, and the museum’s hours have been cut to appointments only.
Read entire article at NYT
“This is his idea, not mine,” Mr. Marsh recalled the woman saying, as she pointed at her husband. “I’m not sure I want to go in.”
Mr. Marsh, the executive director of the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, which operates the museum, was able to convince the woman that it was really not such a ghoulish place, and then led the couple on a tour.
A stone’s throw from Lincoln’s tomb, this unusual cultural repository is an unmistakable reminder that everyone’s days are numbered. Now it seems the same might be true of the museum itself.
Unable to attract enough visitors — the Iowa woman is apparently not the only one who gets the creeps about this place — the museum is struggling to stay alive. The curator position has been eliminated, and the museum’s hours have been cut to appointments only.