Display of ancient mummies disrespectful?

Personally, I believe that it is a great shame when well meaning organizational pressure leads to the artificial sanitization of the way in which we perceive past societies and their cultural output, particularly as regards the exhibits that museums can and cannot have on display. The way in which people behaved in the past does not always mesh with our own present day ideas and tabus, but it is unhelpful and counter productive to "protect" the public from the reality of the past. Doing so merely prevents us from gaining insights into an important part of the cultural spectrum of a given society. The treatment of death by past socieities is an important way of understanding how life was perceived, and it is completely artificial to conceal the physical expression of belief and ideas. Museums are supposed to inform, not disguise.

I do agree that museums have a responsibility to display mummies (and other forms of human remains) in ways which are designed to inform, involve and interest, rather than to sensationalise - which is why there was some negative reaction to the fanfare approach to laying bare Tutankhamun's naked face to visitors at his tomb in Luxor. But I don't believe that anyone could suggest that UK museums are sensationalising our mummies, and it offends me to sugggest that mummies should be withdrawn from display when they form such an important archaeological dataset.

With Body Works matters are probably somewhat different - it seems to me that the main aim there was to create a reaction to the dead form of the body via a highly sensationalist approach. Take it or leave it, people can always vote with their feet.

In the end, I suppose it comes down to a great extent to how we define "disrespectful". If museums have to start imposing modern western ideas of respect on past archaeological objects and sites we are potentially going to be in for a few costly and contraversial changes.