Three large-scale Montreal exhibitions explore human bodies, pirates and outer space this holiday season
Human beings have always searched out and pushed through to what we believe to be, to quote the introduction to the Star Trek TV series, the "final frontier."
Hundreds of years ago it was all about conquering the Earth’s oceans. With the rise of empire came the scourge of the seas, the pirate, the subject of Pointe-à-Callière’s terrific exposition Pirates, Privateers and Freebooters. Visitors board the Pointe-à-Corsair, an exact life-size replica of a 16th-century pirate ship, filled with over 160 fascinating objects – swords, guns, cannons, treasures chests, gold coins – from the wild world of 16th- to-19th-century piracy. We also get a glimpse into the lives of the most famous pirate of all, Blackbeard, and Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, a pirate born in Montreal in 1661 who would go on to destroy 36 English settlements.
Over at the McCord Museum, another highly entertaining exhibit, eSpace, celebrates the 40th anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon. The exhibit is split into three major themes: Exploration, The Real and The Imaginary, and its pièce-de-résistance comes in the form of an actual spacesuit used by a real-life Soviet cosmonaut. The eSpace experience is very much in keeping with what Canadian astronaut Dr. Roberta Bondar once told me: "To see the Earth with nothing around it is to see how dependent we are on the resources of our planet. We must protect it."
While eSpace explores outer space, Bodies…The Exhibition: The Science Inside You explores inner space – the human body. Curated by the famed Dr. Roy Glover, the exhibit is based on the same plastination technology developed by Dr. Gunther Von Hagens. But while Von Hagens’ Body World exhibits lean toward the artistic and sensational, Glover’s is more low-key and educational, though the sections on fetuses and human arteries are particularly mind-blowing.
Bodies…The Exhibition: The Science Inside You
Montreal Exhibition Centre (Eaton Centre, 705 Ste-Catherine W., 5th floor), to Feb. 14
www.expobodies.ca
Pirates, Privateers and Freebooters
At Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History (350 Place Royale), to Jan. 10
www.pacmuseum.qc.ca
eSpace
At the McCord Museum (690 Sherbrooke W.), to Jan.10
www.mccord-museum.qc.ca
2 comments
There is a large archive of information in the public domain about contemporary anatomical exhibitions since the invention of Plastination by German anatomist, Dr. Gunther von Hagens. There is a litany of articles about Dr. von Hagens’ original, scholary work and exhibitions and the rise in knock-off cadaver displays by American and Chinese businessmen jumping on the Body Worlds bandwagon. Suspicious of the large number of young, Chinese men on display in the knock-off displays, who all evidently died of natural causes, several award-winning North American investigative reporters have followed the trail of the bodies to ask where the bodies in these exhibits come from.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/iteam&id=5896409
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4296982&page=1
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4296699
They have found that only Dr. von Hagens’ exhibitions use donor bodies. None of this compelling information seems worthy of reporting by Mr. Richard Burnett. Instead he explains the difference between Dr. von Hagens’ groundbreaking invention and exhibitions and those of a knock-off as follows: “But while Von Hagens’ Body World exhibits lean toward the artistic and sensational, Glover’s is more low-key and educational, ….”
More considered reporting on the issue would be a fine thing.
Gail Vida Hamburg
Director of Communications
Institute for Plastination
Heidelberg, Germany
I think Ms. Hamburg raises some interesting questions about exhibitions that put human corpses on display.
I already found this kind of exhibition tasteless, but it’s even more disturbing if you read some of the allegations from the links Ms. Hamburg provided, such that most of the corpses originate from China and that there is a burgeoning business in black market bodies.
Even though these are still unproven allegations, it’s all very gruesome. It’s one thing for the bodies to come from genuine donors but to come from questionable situations, such as using the corpses of executed prisoners, raises alarm. There are over a thousand executions per year in China (according to Amnesty Int’l), many of them suspect.
This kind of exhibition reeks of profit from death. If one wants to learn about human anatomy, go to med school or simply buy the text books or search the web. These bodies on display were once human beings; there should be some modicum of dignity left to them.