Blogs

After touring the exhibit today as part of a media tour before its opening tomorrow, it’s clear Bodies Revealed does carry a value from an artistic standpoint. The circulation exhibits especially can be beautiful, almost as abstract art. But deciphering what anything means from an educational standpoint is left to the card accompanying each severed limb and displaced organ. This includes lines like “each drop of blood goes through the heart every two minutes.”

When comparing the smoker’s lung to the nonsmoker’s lung, the smoker’s lung clearly looks more like a lump of raw clay. But if you’re still a smoker in 2008, it’s doubtful you’ll drop your Camels in the Plexiglas collection case next to the cancer exhibit. Those Thetruth.com ads already show you things far more horrifying and graphic than anything on display at Bodies Revealed.

The problem is compounded by the bodies themselves not looking all that real. Who’d have know that using a process called plastination to preserve the cadavers for their world tour would make them look like plastic? If you put one of the gift shop skull models next to the real ones, few people could probably tell the difference.

Educational value aside, it’s still an interesting exhibit, and not just for a cheap titillation factor. If you’re interested in how the human body works, it’s easy to see how you could still enjoy the exhibits while not really learning anything in particular. For that, you’ll have to find your own corpse to dissect at home.