Ask + Answer

ASK: Do perceptions about death and burial stay the same? ANSWER:

As Benjamin Franklin once said, only two things in life are certain — death and taxes. Although death is inevitable, the process of how we bury the dead has never been unchangeable. The Henry Ford’s collection documents these changes — both historical and current.

Over the past few decades, more and more Americans have become interested in “green burial” — burial methods that allow a body to naturally decay, unimpeded by vaults, caskets or embalming. This movement is part of a much larger trend of death positivity: a rejection of the way death has been commercialized and a reclamation of death as a normal part of the human condition.

The rise of modern embalming traces its roots back to the Civil War, when bodies of fallen soldiers would be rudimentarily preserved so they could be transported home for burial. At war’s end, embalmers found new ways to market their work, particularly through arguing — falsely — that embalming was more sanitary and better for public health. Death care thus shifted from the home and into the funeral parlor, evolving into an entire industry surrounding death.

Although industrializing death has in many ways allowed and even encouraged us to separate it from our daily lives, there remain communities and cultures whose death-positive traditions have persisted for generations. We need only pull back the veil to see them — and even be inspired by them.

— RACHEL YERKE, CURATORIAL ASSISTANT

Juan Coronel Rivera, Diego Rivera’s Grandson, Prepares an Ofrenda at the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1991

Día de Muertos — a celebration featuring cemetery visits, ofrendas (offerings) and the living communing with the dead — has its roots in the traditions of pre-Hispanic Indigenous Mexicans. Today, it’s celebrated in the United States as well as Mexico.

“Cathedral” Burial Quilt, Made by Quiltmaker Zak Foster, 2019

“I have my own burial quilt already made up, and I can attest to the ways in which it has come to act like a companion from the present all the way to my last day.” — Zak Foster

Second Line Funeral Parade Honoring Danny Barker, May 3, 1995

In New Orleans, funerary “second lines” are a common sight. Brass bands parade through the streets drawing in crowds to celebrate the life of the deceased, a tradition started by Black fraternal organizations in the 1860s.