Exhibit Review: Body Worlds 2 at The Museum of Science, Boston

Imagine that you’re viewing a piece of sculpture in a museum. The object of your consideration is a beautifully articulated ballet dancer, her back arched gracefully in a curve, her arms and extended leg balancing her weight effortlessly, the ripple of every muscle visible to the beholder as she executes her endless pose.

Now imagine that instead of a Degas cast in bronze, the object of your study is a well-preserved, partially dissected human body, with most of its musculature and many of its internal organs made visible, skin peeled away to display that structure in all of its detail, the inner workings of the human skeletal system subject to your perusal, the complex interplay of bone and muscle, tendon and nerve, blood vessels and heart literally laid bare.

Such is the dual nature of Body Worlds 2, one of three concurrently traveling exhibits that are an outgrowth of the life’s work of Dr. Gunther von Hagens, a 60-year-old German scientist who claims to want to demystify the human body for a lay audience. An anatomist by training and profession, von Hagens invented the process by which the specimens in this exhibit are preserved. Called plastination, it involves removing all of the water and fat in a physical specimen and replacing it with reactive polymers, which are later cured through exposure to light, heat, or gas, depending on the polymer used and the intended use of the specimen.

The end result is a durable physical specimen capable of being manipulated to expose the functional relationships between parts to their best advantage. Because the curing process hardens the tissues (unlike the methods used in more traditional forms of specimen preparation), whole bodies can be positioned in specific poses. The lifelike quality of the plastinates, as these preparations are called, renders them valuable as teaching aids, and the process is now widely used as a method of preparing specimens for anatomical studies (according to information available at the exhibit, the process even allows for the histological examination of tissue specimens).

The Body Worlds exhibits, which have been touring the world since 1996, have drawn their share of controversy, and von Hagens is not above using controversial or negative publicity to his advantage. Part science, part art, and part carnival sideshow, the specimens of Body Worlds are more attractively prepared and artfully presented than those many of us have seen in jars of formaldehyde, but indeed hold the same morbid fascination.

The exhibit begins simply enough, with a case of specimens, mostly from the skeletal system. So far, nothing too unusual for a veteran museum visitor. The Body Worlds website states that the primary mission of the exhibits is health education, and indeed, there are specimens here that provide graphic evidence of the end result of abuse. The section on the respiratory system contains three lung specimens – a healthy, unblemished lung, the blackened lung of a smoker, and the nearly unrecognizable lung of a coal miner. The cross sections of brain tissue damaged by stroke, and cardiac muscle damaged by infarct serve to remind us of our vulnerability, and perhaps make us aware of the lifestyle habits that can contribute to such effects.

Article Author: Lisa McKay

Lisa McKay is Blogcritics' Executive Editor. At BC she can usually be found hanging out in the film section. She recently started food blogging at Will Kill for Food.

In her spare time, she watches movies, listens to music, reads, and caters to the whims of two spoiled cats. …

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