Collections or Hoarders or Museums (Can we just make up our minds!?)

To begin this post, I'd like to establish a situational framework. After I establish the foundation, I will proceed to subtlety alter the contents. I expect that your reaction will change as I add and alter the variables; if so, my point will become clear.

Basic: Gunther owns books.

Variation 1: Gunther owns many books. (Sounds good, right? Gunther seems very nice; we'd get along, easily.)

Variation 2: Gunther owns many books and instructional manuals. (At this point, Gunther seems like a technician. He seems to keep abreast of his trade and the latest techniques and practices.)

Variation 3: Gunther owns enough books and instructional manuals to fill multiple rooms in his house. (At this point, you may be thinking: "okay, Gunther might own too many books, but there isn't anything necessarily deviant about that.)

Variation 4: Gunther owns enough books and instructional manuals to fill multiple rooms in his house on how to practice human taxidermy. (You're judging, right? Gunther obviously should be considered insane, locked up, committed. He clearly is a threat to society and a horrible influence on the youth of this proud nation.)

So, clearly, Gunther is deviant. He reads thousands of books on human taxidermy--he must be crazy! But, wait:

http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html

If you follow the above link, you will visit the website of the international exhibition, Body Worlds, curated/founded by Gunther von Hagens. Does your opinion of the Gunther (based on the previous four sentence variations now change?) Why? After all: taxidermy is taxidermy... period. The ethics of human taxidermy should not change from the individual to the organization.

(Here's a link to images of exhibits within Body Worlds: https://www.google.com/search?q=body+worlds&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=CKhdUaTLOYas8AS9ooCgAw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1501&bih=794)

It seems, however, that the institutional backing of Body Worlds--it is an international museum, after all--provides the exhibition some sense of legitimacy. Why is this so?

Here, we see an example of lines blurred, boundaries crossed and order violated. If an action is corrupt by the individual but not by the institution, then our understanding of collections, hoarders and museums must be reevaluated.

Hoarding has a negative connotation, collections seem neutral and museums are inherently positive. In order to better understand these three, we need to reevaluate our biases and reconsider the way we previously ordered and assigned items into these three categories.