NY Noodling: The BODIES Exhibition
I WASN'T going to rush out and see this exhibition, given the $26 entry and the oversize, see-it-all-anyway technicolor psoters on bus shelters and bus sides. And then there was the controversy about the bodies being of Chinese prisoners exhumed without asking their permission first ... But a surgeon friend, Dr Steve Chang, said it was "excellent - wish we'd had it at med school" and his colleague even offered to accompany me and provide a laparoscopic commentary, so how could I refuse? The exhibition starts out modestly with a display of fairly unremarkable skeletons – we've all seen those in high school anatomy classes. Except these skeletons are shown playing football, doing hi-fives and striking other admittedly PG-rated poses, complete with ridiculous smiles on their faces, and staring eyeballs. On this particular day, a no-holds-barred mitzvah (or what sounded like it) was in full swing upstairs, which ruined the potentially contemplative ambience.