Remembering Gretchen Worden

Philadelphia lost a great cultural treasure in August with the passing of the Mütter Museum's director, Gretchen Worden, on August 2, 2004.

To get a taste of Gretchen at her most incandescent, listen to her interview with NPR's Terry Gross. She could always be counted on to make your day a little more surreal.

As a companion exhibition to the memorial service celebrating Gretchen's life and work, the College of Physicians, the Mütter's parent organization, reconstituted the demented holiday creche and other displays that Gretchen mounted with great glee. They're like an Archie McPhee retrospective. As her many friends around the world learned of her collecting interests, she was presented with many souvenirs of questionable taste.

I photographed some of the creche and collection stuff a couple of months ago and at the recent request of some of her colleagues have put it online here:

• Gretchen's creche 1
• Gretchen's creche 2
• Gretchen's creche 3
• Gretchen's creche - interior closeup
• Gretchen's creche - left detail
• Gretchen's creche - right detail
• Gretchen's creche - Gretchen's DWI snowmen
• Gretchen's creche - Gretchen's Merry Christmas Ninjas
• Gretchen's rats 1
• Gretchen's rats 2
• Gretchen's cats 'n' rats
• Gretchen's toilet paper
• Gretchen's twins
• Gretchen's hooch

Gretchen was cool. We all miss her very much.