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Wednesday, March 29, 2006
BODIES: The Exhibition
Today I got a creepy eye full, all in the name of social science. The Museum of Science and Industry here in Tampa has been the home for the controversial BODIES: The Exhibition for the past several months. If you’re not familiar with the BODIES exhibit, real cadavers are "laminated" by a process called plasticization and then shaped into a variety of positions in order to show how the human body functions. These are then propped up in a museum and people pay to file past them as well as display cases of real body parts, fetuses, and reconstructed circulatory systems. All of the cadavers on display look basically like the photo to the left. They’ve had the skin removed and all that remains are the muscles and/or bones. The complete specimens on display are not under glass: instead they are located throughout the hall doing things like playing basketball, kicking a soccer ball, or reading a book. The most bizarre display was the muscle part of a human holding hands with its own skeleton. Different class-covered displays have examples of body parts in various states, such as a cancerous bone and smoker’s lungs as well as healthy parts for comparison. It all sounds quite odd and it really is, especially when the company putting on the exhibition, Premier Exhibitions, has been the target of some controversy due to the questionable origin of the bodies themselves.
Exhibits like these are nothing new. The Premier Exhibitions version is one of the most popular ones and they have shows scheduled in Tampa, London, Atlanta, and New York. Due to the overwhelming popularity, its stay in Tampa has been extended twice and is now slated to remain at MOSI until September. Not surprisingly, the use of real human cadavers for infotainment purposes draws huge crowds who want to get up close and personal to a former living, breathing fellow human. All in the name of science, right? Personally, I take great issue with Premier Exhibitions BODIES exhibit not because of the concept itself, which I think it a wonderful idea, but because of the questionable nature of the acquisition of some of the display items. Honestly, I have no data other than newspaper reports and information from some of my colleagues, but I have no reason to doubt these sources. Most of the specimens are Chinese and it is believed that they were homeless individuals that did not (or were unable to) give their permission for their remains to be used. With such a huge moneymaker as BODIES, it would not surprise me if certain details were purposefully kept on the D.L.
As I won’t pay to see the exhibit because of the shadiness, I finally got to see it today for free because I have been assigned some G.A. hours working with a student who is doing a project about public response to the exhibit. He has a set of written pre- and post-interviews and plans to conduct oral interviews with people who have just seen the exhibit. We spent most of our time at MOSI today setting up in the main entrance area but were able to tour the exhibit beforehand and meet several of the museum staff. Although it was mostly large school groups, I was surprised by the overall turnout for a Tuesday morning. One of the museum administrators was telling us that they’ve been averaging about 5,500 visitors per day during the week and a little more than twice that on the weekends, most to see the BODIES exhibit. Just goes to show that one doesn’t have to be breathing (or even fully articulated) to achieve rockstar status.
Posted by Will at March 29, 2006 12:02 AM in Graduate School