Seeing a cadaver in an art exhibition is not something people expect to encounter in their museum excursions through New York City.
In Bodies: The Exhibition, however, one has the ability to witness not only one body specimen, but 22--not to mention the additional 260 organs and partial body specimens that are showcased for the public.
In a city as large and modern as New York, it may seem difficult to shock a population that has seen it all. Bodies: The Exhibition proves that with a little effort--and a large assortment of well-preserved corpses--the task can be done.
The 30,000-square-foot exhibition, open since November at the South Street Seaport Museum, has attracted half-a-million viewers and generated a generous amount of discussion.
Dr. Roy Glover, a medical educator with more than 30 years of experience, is the residing Chief Medical Director of the exhibit. In a statement released to the public before the exhibition's opening, he expressed an interest to show visitors "what lies beneath" and the complex systems involved in the activities that are a part of daily life.
"The presentation of the exhibit makes it seem like a real-life biology textbook," said a woman visiting the exhibit from New Jersey.
Glover said the subject of the exhibit, until now, has been off limits to the public-with cadavers and bodies made available only to doctors and medical students. The phrase "the body doesn't lie" serves as the mantra for the exhibit, a press release stated.
All bodies used within the exhibit are preserved through a technique called polymer preservation. The process itself is revolutionary, said Press Spokesperson Holly Taylor.
During the procedure, human tissue is permanently preserved using liquid silicone rubber. "This prevents the natural process of decay, making the specimens available for study for an indefinite period of time," Taylor said. Specimens can take anywhere from one week to a year to complete the period of preservation.
While the exhibit is scientifically sound, there is still a fair amount of controversy surrounding Bodies: the Exhibition and its description as "art." Although the creators of the exhibition have not given it this label, they have made no objection to newspapers and viewers who have publicly termed the exhibit such.
"The identity of art today is very flexible, embracing an infinite variety of possibilities," said Kristine Stiles, Duke professor of art history. "The question then is not whether or not the cadavers in the [show] are art, but what is the quality of the corpses turned into objects." Stiles also said that if one is to determine art by means of how well something is made, the specimens can be described as such: objects that have been skillfully preserved.
"However, if one considers the quality of the presentation-flayed cadavers playing basketball or chess.or holding one's brain in one's hand, then the presentation is nothing short of kitsch, the German word for something that is very vulgar, mass-produced and vulnerable to the production of spectacle," Stiles said.
One viewer at the exhibition, a young man from New York City, offered a different view. "Every figure was artistic," he said. "It wasn't just a cadaver. It was looking back at you."
Further controversy surrounds Gunther Von Hagens, inventor of polymer preservation and founder of Body Worlds, a separate exhibition and the first to put cadavers on display to the public. Although Bodies: The Exhibition is independent of the work of Von Hagens, the two exhibits are subject to similar criticisms. Von Hagens has recently received a tremendous amount of negative attention regarding his father, who is reported to have been a Nazi official serving in the SS.
On June 11, 2006, a protest was held outside the Museum of Natural Science in Houston, Texas that was housing Von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibit. Protesters carried signs with slogans comparing the body specimens within the museum to the Nazi transformation of bodies into objects such as soap, felt and lampshades. Criticism for its exhibition as art on the basis of its comparisons to Nazism is a subject which both exhibits have had difficulty combating.
Even with the magnitude of Body Worlds' ethical criticisms, heated arguments were recently overshadowed by a "scientific mishap" surrounding the Body Worlds exhibit in San Francisco, California. ABC News reported last month "leaking bodies." Apparently, silicone had begun to "bead up across faces, dripping inside chest cavities, and pooling beneath feet." Several scientists agreed that the effects were due to rushed polymer preservation.
Regardless of where international opinion lies in regards to Bodies: the Exhibition and the comparable Body Worlds, the exhibit remains a unique mix of both art and science, and certainly one worth seeing in flesh and blood.
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