BODIES: The Exhibition

Last year, my best friends took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History on the weekend before my birthday.

This year, our pre-birthday festivities took a decidedly morbid turn when the girls took me to the bodies exhibit at South Street Seaport. It was a beautiful day, I was in a gloriously wonderful mood and I became convinced that seeing cadavers in various states of dissection on display for gawking visitors would be a downer. But the tickets had been paid for and, I can't say that I wasn't curious, so I went along.

I was blown away. The exhibit was an awesome fusion of biology and artistry. People had brought their kids (folks, we're talking about four year olds) who were just as awestruck as the adults. The exhibit, which took us an hour and a half to walk through, consisted of ten themed rooms. My favorites rooms featured fetal development and the vascular system. From an early blastocyst up to a 32 week fetus, humans at every stage of development are suspended in glass cases. At later stages, the fetuses' developing bones glow with multi-colored dyes through their translucent bodies in the darkened room. At the center of the display is a pregnant woman's pelvic region, dissected to show the three-month old fetus inside of her.

The vascular system room was just as amazing. Glass cases in the dimmed room held perfectly intact blood vessels from the leg, the heart, the lungs, etc.. The vessels are in the shape of the body part from where they were dissected and glow a vibrant shade of red. The most impressive display in this room features an entire body stripped down to just the blood vessels. It is a sight to behold.

In other places, an obese woman's body is sliced vertically in four pieces to show the distribution of fat (if this won't make a person change their unhealthy lifestyle, nothing will), the tumor-ridden breasts of a patient in her final phase of breast cancer sit in a glass case, and viewers are allowed a look into the brain of a dissected cadaver, posed into the position of Rodin's The Thinker.

Bodies provides a fascinating look into what we all look like on the inside and I so highy recommend it!