An acquaintance I bumped into at the preview was trying to think of a way “Body Worlds 2” could be more tasteful. She wondered whether plastic models wouldn’t suffice. Perhaps for scientific study, but the reason von Hagens’s specimens are so moving and sometimes disturbing is that they’re real bodies. A fake corpse playing soccer is just tacky; a real corpse playing soccer is tacky and charged with something more.
Von Hagens argues that he’s part of a long and noble scientific tradition. Scientific progress, like artistic progress, often requires upsetting propriety; today’s quacks are tomorrow’s Galileos. But I’m not sure von Hagens is a Galileo, despite the museum’s trumpeting him as “the leading anatomist of our time.” He’s more like a remarkable tinkerer turned outsider artist, with a multi-million-dollar budget. That’s why he includes a metal plaque inscribed with his signature before each full-body display. It feels one step removed from a surgeon tattooing his name across a patient to claim credit for his handiwork. But what questions “Body Worlds 2” work raises! Why does it upset us if someone shows no respect for the dead? Do the dead care? When we die, are our bodies more than meat? Why does our meat make us so mortified? Ultimately these questions are all part of the oldest question: what happens to us after we’re gone?
‘Body Worlds 2’ | Museum of Science, Science Park, Boston | Through January 7
Related:
The 100 unsexiest men 2007: 100-91, Crossword: 'They're playing my song', Worst in breed: Movies, More 
- The 100 unsexiest men 2007: 100-91
These guys couldn't turn on a radio
- Crossword: 'They're playing my song'
35 Across: Character introduced with fiddles and a banjo
- Worst in breed: Movies
Who are the unsexiest movies men of 2007?
- The play’s the thing
“I like rhythmic structure,” Bevin Kelley says on the phone from Providence, where she lives.
- Hipster University
On-campus concerts — for us graduates or college abstainers — offer a lot to complain about, but it’s worth taking a chance on a college gig or two this year.
- Sight and insight
“New Visions” is the kind of title ballet-company directors come up with for programs that are sort of new and are hoping for vision.
- Bodies and souls
Preserved flayed corpses at the Museum of Science, Americans in Paris at the Museum of Fine Arts, underground art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, beavers at Mass College of Art — it was that kind of year, capped off by the arrival of the new Institute of Contemporary Art.
- In focus
Photography has been New England’s greatest contribution to art of the past century.
- A galaxy far, far away
Recently I found myself aboard the Air Chair, a padded seat atop what looks like a riding lawnmower, at the Museum of Science’s “Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination” exhibit.
- Eight is enough
Sometimes we’d rather root for the unknowns, the underdogs, and the uniques than the professional jerks who are only competing to sweeten their endorsement deals.
- The great Boston art shakeout
By September, the Harrison Avenue gallery district seemed to have become a zombie, stiffly stumbling forward, as the citywide exhibit-space upheaval that began this past spring caught up with the neighborhood.
- Less
Topics:
Museum And Gallery
, Sports, Winter Sports, Boston Museum of Science, More
, Sports, Winter Sports, Boston Museum of Science, Skiing, Gunther von Hagens, Less
