Mummified Human Arm
Norwich, Connecticut
The Slater Memorial Museum is famous for its "Cast Gallery," a room filled with 150 full-size, accurate plaster replicas of famous classical sculptures from antiquity and the Renaissance. It's also known for its collection of Norwich-area art and history, including the Norwich-invented exploding lance and whale bomb gun.
But for all of its many highlights, this place really should be better known for its mummified human arm.
"It makes me a little uncomfortable, I'll be really honest," said museum director Vivian Zoe of the arm, although she acknowledged that mummified human arms are even more rare than Cast Galleries in American museums.
The Slater Museum opened on November 23, 1888, bankrolled by William Albert Slater, an extremely rich son of a Connecticut cotton mill baron. The arm is not William Slater's. According to Vivian, it was donated to the museum in the 1970s by Peter Pellettieri, a Connecticut sculptor and art professor. He claimed that it came from an Egyptian mummy. "It has that to say for itself," said Vivian, and the museum accordingly displays it in a showcase with other Egyptian artifacts.
The arm, always an awkward relic, could have been quietly retired after Pellettieri died in 1997, stuck in a box somewhere and long forgotten. But Vivian is proud of the museum's eclectic reputation -- "We are quirky all over the place!" she exclaimed -- and so the arm stays, serving, she said, as a kind of ropey, desiccated ambassador to those who otherwise might not visit.
"It's definitely not a classical arm," Vivian said. "But if it brings people in and they become fascinated, then they might look at other stuff that isn't quite so gruesome."