Objective/context:

In recent years, the paradigms that historically justified anthropological exhibitions have been the subject of in-depth review, related, among other factors, to a re-linking of the discipline with museums and the active presence of communities demanding the exercise of a right over heritage. At the same time, within the framework of the most participatory trends, audience studies have become an area of research with a major impact on institutional management. In this article, we intend to contribute to enriching a field of reflection that brings anthropological heritage in museums and the theory of social representations into dialogue, through a particular experience regarding exhibitions of human remains (HR), based on the case of Museo de La Plata (Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina). With nineteenth-century characteristics, for some years this institution has been developing new policies around bio anthropological collections of American origin, which were withdrawn from exhibition.

Methodology:

This is an ethnographic-qualitative study that seeks to understand and analyze the set of social representations, and their dispersion and articulation, which appear in the discourse of visitors. The interviews were subjected to discourse analysis, based on the semiotics of statements. From a constructivist perspective, a relational model was configured that articulates the components of argumentation to define semiotic worlds, preserving their dispersion and identifying trends or patterns.

Conclusions:

The results made it possible to model the relational system that underpins the arguments and to identify trends in visitors' discourse: according to the recognition of the subject of the claim, the status given to HR and the conception of the museum.

Originality:

Reflections on a subject of political, ethical and anthropological transcendence, such as the exhibition of human remains and mummified bodies, find in audience studies one of the knowledge strategies that most contribute to the construction of a dialogical model, leaving room for controversy, contradiction and the multiplicity of glances.

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