The story began in a St. Louis cemetery, where at least six Filipinos are buried. They had come from the Philippines to be put on display at the 1904 World’s Fair, living in model villages for onlookers to gawk at their customs. They never returned home.
A few years ago, a Filipino American activist and artist, Janna Añonuevo Langholz, learned about their stories and went looking for them, marking their graves and leading tours of the site of the Philippine Exhibition. She also made a startling discovery: The brains of four Filipino people had been removed and sent to the Smithsonian’s U.S. National Museum, the precursor to the National Museum of Natural History.
Claire Healy, a copy aide at The Washington Post and a freelance writer, learned about Langholz’s work and probed further. “I asked the Smithsonian, ‘How many brains do you have and why?’ And they sent me a spreadsheet,” she said.
Healy partnered with investigative reporter Nicole Dungca to keep digging. “There were children in the collection,” Dungca said. “There were men and women and then fetuses. Many of them were Indigenous people, other people of color. And many of them didn’t have their identities actually recorded, partly because they were looked at as specimens.”
Senior video editor Joy Sharon Yi traveled to St. Louis to interview Langholz, and filmed Healy and Dungca as they pieced together the final parts of the story.
Together, and with the help of data reporter Andrew Ba Tran, the team assembled the most extensive analysis and accounting of the Smithsonian’s collection to date.
In their year-long journey, the reporters learned about the larger collection of human remains housed by the National Museum of Natural History and Ales Hrdlicka, the man largely responsible for the curation of these remains. They also sought to uncover the names and stories of the people whose brains had been taken, including, as records suggest, a young Filipino woman named Maura.
Reporting, editing, production and support on The Collection involved a project team of more than 90 people to help bring these stories to light. This team included 83 Washington Post journalists and staffers, six independent contributors and four students from the American University-Washington Post practicum program.
About The Collection
A Washington Post investigative series on human brains and other body parts held by the Smithsonian.
Have a tip or story idea about the collection? Email our team at [email protected].
Methodology
To accurately reflect the racism that was common at the time in newspaper articles and official documents, The Post chose to show original records that contain language considered offensive by modern standards.
About this story
Editing by Sarah Childress, David Fallis, and Aaron Wiener. Copy editing by Anjelica Tan, Kim Chapman and Jordan Melendrez.
Project editing by KC Schaper with additional support from Tara McCarty.
Video by Joy Sharon Yi. Reporting by Claire Healy, Nicole Dungca and Andrew Ba Tran. Senior produced by Jayne Orenstein. Executive produced by Tom LeGro. Animation by Sarah Hashemi. Illustrations by Ren Galeno. Additional video by Lindsey Sitz and Sarah Hashemi. Photo editing by Robert Miller and Troy Witcher.
Design by Tara McCarty and Audrey Valbuena. Digital development by Audrey Valbuena. Print design by Tara McCarty. Additional design by Laura Padilla Castellanos. Design editing by Christian Font and Christine Ashack.
Additional editing, production and support by Jeff Leen, Jenna Lief, Matt Callahan, Junne Alcantara, Sofia Diogo Mateus, Grace Moon and Matt Clough.