Health Is a Human Right—at CDC?

In 2013–14, the Smithsonian-affiliated David J. Sencer Museum at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted an original exhibition with an eye-catching title: “Health Is a Human Right: Race and Place in America.” Given the American government’s entrenched resistance to health-related human rights claims, the staging of an exhibition with this title at a museum described as the public face of CDC was striking. Taking this apparent disjuncture as point of departure, this article examines the origins, aims, and content of the “Health Is A Human Right” exhibition, which attracted nearly 50,000 visitors. Drawing on qualitative research findings, the article engages three interrelated questions: First, how can this exhibition, in this particular locale, be reconciled—if at all—with the absence of any firm right to health commitment in the United States? Second, what does the exhibition reveal about the “social life” of health-related human rights claims? Finally, what might we learn from the exhibition about the potential role of museums and museology in sparking public engagement with health and human rights issues, especially in settings where human rights have some rhetorical power but lack legal or political traction?