I went to Manchester yesterday, with some of my fellow students, to see the Body Worlds exhibition. I had a fantastic day, because I met up with one of my old friends and spent the day with her.
The Body Worlds exhibition is showing at the Museum of Science and Industry, and I urge all who read this to go. It is a fantastic combination of art and science, and I wish they allowed photography within the exhibition. For a sample of what they have on display, I recommend sticking it in to Google Images or something.
For those that don’t know anything about it, the collection is the work of Gunther von Hagens, an anatomist who has developed a technique called plastication. This is essentially sucking all the juices out of flesh, and replacing them with plastic. People can donate their bodies to be put on display in the future.
Among the exhibits were:
- a gorrila, which still had most of its facial skin on, but was fascinating purely due to its size
- a table of three poker players, each displaying a different part of the anatomy (eg one was mostly skeleton, another had his abdomen cut open), which was amazing, the facial expressions were fantastic and one of them was cheating!
travel.ciao.co.uk
- a woman stepping out of her skin, which was beautiful in the strangest way
- a collection of foetuses at different developmenal stages, which would be quite enough to put anybody off abortion.
- a single badmintion player that had been seperated into three bodies all joined at the foot, one showing skeleton and tendons, one showing organs, and one showing muscles.
bodyworlds.com
Along with the big exhibits there were tables with smaller exhibits, such as single organs. These included a smokers and non-smokers lungs, and some damaged organs such as an enlarged heart and a brain that had suffered a fatal stroke.
Body worlds is also showing in Milwaukee, Baltimore, and LA. There are four different collections – the one I saw was Body Worlds 4.
For more up-to-date information, visit the Museum Of Science & Industry website, or the Body Worlds website
