Body Worlds 2 @ Museum Of Science & Industry



REAL PEOPLE, FOLKS!!!!
Too damn cool. I totally want to go. And the kids are practically dragging me out the door to go, as well.

i went to the first installation at science & industry with red last year (or two years ago). i liked it, thought it was interesting, had a few ethical concerns about the art, spent a lot of time reading and learning.

i am still not sure what the difference between the body worlds exhibits are. (there're 3 now.)

Todd, stop living under a rock.

It's kind of creepy, so do some reading before taking the kids.

Let's see how informed you are after you pop out a couple of puppies and move to the 'burbs!

Believe it or not, I take being a parent seriously.
I have done some reading and have given them the whole speech about what the exhibit is all about and just what it is. I've shown them a couple of pictures and we've had a pretty good talk about it all. They still want to go. We still may. Hard to say now.

I thought it was great.

I wish I could've been in charge of the poses.

i wanted to go to this when it was in town but missed it.

The dead bodies were the best actors in Casino Royale.

i believe you, todd. about the good parent thing.

a lot of the bodies in this exhibit and similar displays around the world have come from very questionable sources. some are certified remains from people who have donated their remains but many come from china and eastern european countries and are thought to be mental patients and prisoners and other undesirables. there's a very lucrative black market for cadavers.

as a figure painter i'm completely fascinated by these cadavers. i mean the old masters learned from cadavers--many of them stolen or robbed from graves for scientific study. yet i have a problem supporting these exhibits for ethical reasons.

now your kids don't ever have to know this. it's up to you. i'm sure they'll get a kick out of it. it's a cool learning experience. i'm just offering up something to think about.

my first thoughts are that a human being, although dead, deserves more respect than to be put in a museum to be displayed.

I never doubted your parenting skills. It was just a suggestion to read up on it since it creeped me out and I was 28 when I saw it. Although little kids might just think it's cool and not be bothered by the fact that these people were once alive and kicking and now they're playing basketball in the middle of a museum floor.

Ayah, I didn't know all that about how the bodies were obtained. Where'd you hear/read that? I'd love to read more about it.

it was in the news a lot when the exhibits opened on the east coast. i read about it in the ny times and npr also ran a story on it. fascinating stuff.

You should read the book Stiff. It's all about cadavers, where they go and what gets done with them; all the fucked up uses for them that science dreams up.

One of the differences I believe was how sure people are that the bodies come from 'volunteers'. I believe one of the exhibits used cadavers from China, and there was a question as to whether they had been volunteered to science or not.

There may also be a difference in the plastination technique used - not sure.

its a lot better than what we did to them in gross anatomy lab

edit: and we could of course turn this into an abortion debate

Paging Hegel...

After I'm dead, I would like my corpse to pop out of a cake at a mortician's convention.

"BODIES The Exhibition" is currently in Seattle. It's the Body Worlds knock off with most or all of the cadavers from China. It's not even an exhibit at a legitimate museum. After reading about this one I chose not to go although I'd like to see Body Worlds.

I'll pass. If they come back to life as zombies I'm not havin' it. Zombies ain't right. And arty farty zombies even more not right.

They had a segment on Boston Legal about this.

How? I would guess that the fetuses would be obtained from various stages of miscarriage.

That's uneducated, of course.

I enjoyd it, very cool. Definitely had an ethical debate with myself over it though...some of it is very eductional, but some is obviously using the human body as a canvas for art

I went to the MSI yesterday (although not to see Body Worlds 2, just to check it out)

Honestly what a dump that place has become. Literally nothing interactive worked. What's more, we waited about 1 hour in line just to get in and paid $12 for parking on site. I can't figure out how the place isn't raking it in enough to at least do some basic maintenance on the longstanding exhibits, but what do I know about museum finances.

I'm sure kids still get a big kick out of it like I used to.

I'm with Red on this one. The whole idea of this exhibit creeps me out beyond belief.

I honestly don't think I'd even take my 9 yr old to see this. And I always read in the papers and mags from other parents that it scared the crap out of their kids the first go round.

Ayah's comments about the possible illegal obtaining of the bodies is rather fascinating though.

Yeah, some of those older exhibits haven't been updated or even kept up since I visited originally in 1986. My favorite was the inverted cone used to show centrifugal or centripetal force or whatever. You press a button and I think a ball is supposed to then spin around and around the cone until it gets to the bottom. Instead, it just rolls straight down. Hilariously awful.

this is a fact.
and hey, the msi was great when i was there for a third grade field trip in 1964.