Louise arters biography

Gretchen Worden, Mutter Museum chief

By Gayle Ronan Sims

Inquirer Staff Writer

Gretchen Worden, 56, director of the Mutter Museum, who transformed a collection of sublime anatomical medical oddities and history into a work of art that spoke for itself, died Monday of respiratory failure at Hahnemann University Hospital.

Before Ms.

Worden's arrival in 1975, the Mutter Museum was nothing more than an eccentric collection that very few people knew about and even fewer visited. Today, it is a true museum, drawing more than 60,000 visitors annually and enjoying a worldwide reputation.

It has a successful gift shop and is the subject of one of the most unusual coffee-table books ever published.

Ms. Worden brought energy and imagination to the staid museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Ms.

Worden's understanding and enthusiasm for the pathological items - including Chief Justice John Marshall's bladder stones; a tumor removed from President Grover Cleveland's