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Friday, December 7, 2012

"Body World" at The Anchorage Museum


Yesterday my family and I met up with some old friends from Dillingham,( a small Alaskan bush town only accessible by airplane ). They had flown into Anchorage for the day to take their two youngest girls to the dentist. It had been five years since our two families had been together, so we decided to make an event out of it and do an activity together. “Body World” was on exhibit at the Anchorage Museum, and it was agreed upon by both parties that it would be both educational and entertaining…
In addition to living up to the first two expectations, I also found “Body World” somewhat disturbing.  Although this really shouldn’t be surprising when you consider what exactly was on display; namely preserved cadavers. 
Each one was different. Some were whole bodies, minus most of the skin, with muscles or other structures removed to allow for multiple anatomical views. Others were individual organs, or cross sections of organs. The example that I found the most striking was a cast of the vasculature of the arm.
   From a video clip playing in a continuous loop, we learned that each body (which had been donated to science before the person’s death) was been preserved by a process developed and perfected over several decades, called “plastination”,  which causes a kind of polymer  to be absorbed into the tissue at a cellular level, and therefore allows  for exquisite preservation of the whole form. The bodies are then set carefully in poses and hardened in with heat in an air tight chamber.
  It could be argued that art is classified as “good” or interesting based on how we identify with what we see. We can also judge something of the character of the artist by his work. The singular thing that made “Body World” different from any other exhibit  I’ve seen so far, was the fact that every  “sculpture” had actually once been a moving breathing being. And in each astoundingly intricate example, I couldn’t help but see a somewhat eerie and sobering reflection of myself. And looking through the glass at the body-  was awe inspiring, because I knew the same artist had made us both.

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