Body Worlds

The day after Thanksgiving, AJ and I went to the Minnesota Science Museum to see the BodyWorlds exhibit, leaving the kids in the care of nana and papa. I was a little distressed getting there, since there was no parking. Shopping, a hockey game, and Hmong New Year all in the same part of St Paul resulted in large numbers of cars. I finally dropped AJ off and drove into a residential area 10 minutes walk from the museum to park. Ugh.

BodyWorlds exhibits plasticized human bodies. Prior to death, people donated their bodies to science and some of them ended up plasticized, a process of polymerization. (This was described in Mary Roach's book Stiff, which I wrote a bit about earlier.) Depending on the display, certain parts of the body were plasticized and other removed. I alternated between being totally fascinated by the human organ systems that were shown in such a remarkable fashion (I especially loved the circulatory system), and then remembering that these used to be real people. I felt that the most with the 8 month pregnant woman--but it was so incredible to see the baby in utero too. For the majority of the time, I thought of them as really amazing displays of the human body, and then every once in a while, something would jolt me to remember that they had former lives. The toenails especially did this for me.

I didn't like the human body as art take. I felt like it was disrespectful and that if I had donated my body to be plasticized, I wouldn't mind being displayed to show my organs, but I would mind if my muscles had been cut and shaped to look like a mane.

All in all, though, it was very intersting and I'm glad we went. And I really want to go back to see the whole science museum.