In a dim room in Manhattan, a man of steak-red muscle holds a body's length of skin aloft, as though the dermis is some unnecessary adornment. A suit, even, to be thrown in a closet. Limp and stripped of all utility. Razed of not only skin, but also fat, this muscle man — strung with spidery tendons — is lean to the core.
But in "Body Worlds: Pulse," an exhibit of preserved cadavers and organs opening today at Discovery Times Square, he's called "Skin Man." A blunt description, and not without a sense of humor.
Outside the bounds of the exhibit, tourists from any number of countries flock to the light-bulb-limned signs of Broadway, consuming fast food and diversions. Further into "Body Worlds," an obese figure lies flat in a display case with its front cut open, providing an example of how organs can be pressed by excess fat. The description: "Adiposity." Lodged within, seeming like a tiny Matchbox car under so much flesh: a pacemaker.
Exhibit planner Angelina Whalley stands in front of 'The Juxtaposed Couple' at 'Body Worlds: Pulse,' now open at Discovery Times Square in New York.
The exhibit is called "Pulse." But it may just as well be called "Balance," since it shows us that our insides are both more fragile and mutable than we might believe and, pointedly, what happens when we do not maintain some balance.
Illustrated with benign cartoons, an introductory video still manages to hit hard with the main idea: We just don't stop. More technology means more multitasking, faster lives and less thought given to what we're eating, how we're moving — or not moving — and what that routine does to a body after years of the same.
"There's a narrative and viewpoint taken with the 'Body Worlds' show," says Angelina Whalley, master planner of the exhibition.
There may be enough innards and posed bodies, but that narrative is not one of anatomy, says Whalley, a physician surrounded by brains shucked of their skulls and hearts plucked from their circulatory systems.
"Body Worlds," she says, is meant to be about how we move through life's stresses, often emerging worse for them in the end.
Underlying the display is a message that a body under pressure — from frenzied pacing, constant juggling and mental strain — is a body on the defensive. A body susceptible to the development of problems, just a few being diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, cancer and coronary heart disease, the top cause of death in the United States.
Some of the specimens concentrate on single systems, like this head of blood vessels.
"It is really my sincere goal to not raise a finger and say, 'Don't do this, don't do that,' " says Whalley, readying the exhibit for the opening. Yet after similar shows in other cities, she's seen reports that visitors have pledged to stop smoking, exercise more and eat healthy. "It's like a paradigm shift," she says.
Moments later, Whalley plucks a chocolate from a tray of truffles, delicately moving the sweet into a display case. The pastel confections provide a respite from the exhibit's saturation of exposed muscle, vasculature and organs-under-glass, though not for some lecture about sugar and dopamine.
They're in a corner of "Body Worlds" that seeks to explain how choice can affect our bodies. Faced with too many, we are overwhelmed. Too little, and we are unhappy. Given a tray loaded with chocolates, we aren't sure our choice of "just one" will be the right choice. Given six, we feel better about the choice. Given one chocolate — eliminating our ability to choose — we feel dissatisfied.
The bottom line, however, is that if we end up with "smoker's foot," we've possibly made a wrong choice. A thin slice from such a leg amputated from a living donor — its tissue darkened by artery damage — forms an eerie, tar silhouette against a sterile, white display.
In 1977, Whalley's husband, doctor and anatomist Gunther von Hagens, invented plastination, the process by which specimens are preserved for display. Fluid and fatty tissue are replaced with acetone, which is, in turn, replaced with a polymer solution through "forced vacuum impregnation," which uses a vacuum chamber to suck out the acetone, allowing polymer to occupy the tissue. It can take up to 1,500 hours to plastinate an entire body.
Von Hagens, a visiting professor at New York University College of Dentistry, founded the Institute for Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1993, where Whalley is managing director.
'Skin Man,' another full-body specimen at 'Body Worlds: Pulse.' The bodies are preserved using the process of plastination invented by Whalley's husband, the anatomist Gunther von Hagens. (John Munson/The Star-Ledger)
Accompanying "Skin Man" in the plastinated specimens at "Body Worlds" are other action-themed "men" — Tai Chi Man, The Javelin Thrower, The Jumping Dancer. Though it's not a part of "Pulse," Von Hagens supervised the plastination of a whole equestrian figure — man and horse — in his "Rearing Horse with Rider," a process that took three years. In 2002, he also conducted a live, public autopsy in London.
"Pulse" specimens, if not individual organs, often zero in on certain body systems. One nook of the Times Square display has a lamb displaced of all parts except its network of blood vessels, amounting to an animal-shaped nest of Day-Glo red. It's a favorite of Whalley's.
"They look so beautiful and fragile at the same time," she says. Elsewhere, a human brain gives new meaning to the term "floating head," sitting atop a hanging web of stringy central and peripheral nervous systems, sans body.
The first "Body Worlds" show opened in 1995 in Tokyo. Other unrelated exhibits that utilize plastination have included "Bodies: The Exhibition," which debuted in 2005 in Tampa, Fla., and the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. Controversy attached to that exhibit revolved around the origin of Chinese cadavers used to create the display; an investigation later revealed that "Bodies" had not obtained proper consent for all of its specimens.
Von Hagens' institute has solicited consent from anyone willing to have their body plastinated, though it's not currently accepting new donations. Registered body donors number 13,218, both living and dead.
Whalley says specimens used in "Body Worlds: Pulse" range from three to 10 years old.
The issue of consent was "a very important distinction" in bringing "Body Worlds" to Times Square, says James Sanna, president of Discovery Times Square. Having traveled around the world with various themes not limited to the heart, brain and aging, "Body Worlds" has been working with the Manhattan venue for years to formulate an appropriate exhibit.
"We wanted to be sure to create a show that was specific to New York and the region," says Sanna, "Pulse" underscoring how a 24/7 lifestyle can have a marked effect on physical welfare.
"What you learn is a body under stress looks different than one that isn't," he says. Moreover, that "stress" can also mean weight, says Sanna, and that New Yorkers living car-free may enjoy more perks than simply beating traffic.
"We try to find great moments of achievement or discovery," Sanna says. Past attractions have shone a spotlight on Leonardo da Vinci, the terra cotta warriors of China and artifacts from the Titanic. Here, says Sanna, the technology used to prepare the bodies itself — plastination — is the achievement.
"We look to achieve everything even faster," says the exhibit's opening video. Concluding, it says we may operate by an accelerated pulse in this modern world, but that our body "has its own pulse."
Specimens illustrate attacks on the body — a breast with cancer, a lung blackened by smoking and a fatty liver, which can result from excessive alcohol consumption. Even the lung of a city dweller is marked by effects of environmental pollution.
While it's hard to get more transparent than defatted, skinless bodies, "Body Worlds" doesn't hold back in what it chooses to detail.
The central and peripheral nervous system.
Rival exhibits, such as "Bodies: The Exhibition," have prefaced fetus specimens with a note allowing visitors to take a different route if they think the section would make them uncomfortable. "Body Worlds" does not.
Starting with embryos smaller than seahorses, fetuses are highlighted at various stages, from 18 weeks to 8 months. Accompanying the motion-oriented cadaver "men" is a standing, plastinated pregnant woman, a fetus visible through an opening in the midsection.
Such an open approach has not drawn opposition, but interest, Whalley says: "Especially children, knowing that they have once been so tiny."
While Whalley maintains that the point isn't to be preachy, conjuring the exhibit's cautionary health message are quotes — taken from diverse sources including Abraham Lincoln and the Talmud.
Another part of the display allows visitors take their own blood pressure. Yet another asks them to finish the sentence "Before I die I want to" on a touchscreen, their answers flashing onto a big screen for everyone to see.
Near the end of "Body Worlds," there's video of a speech from Ric Elias, passenger on US Airways Flight 1549, the plane that in 2009 landed on the Hudson. Elias talks about how realizing that he'd come close to death changed his outlook on living.
'Tai Chi Man,' one of the movement-oriented specimens at 'Body Worlds.'
Also nearby, images taken from photographer Peter Menzel's book "Hungry Planet: What The World Eats" juxtapose a typical American diet with the cupboards of families in Egypt, Mexico and Australia.
A color-coded map shows the United States to have one of the highest incidences of overweight people in the world.
Sealing the "Body Worlds" story is a message titled, "One Life," inked on a wall panel:
"Our culture is dedicated to perpetuating the myth," it says, "that you can stay young and vital for as long as you wish."
Where: Discovery Times Square, 226 W. 44th St., between Seventh and Eighth avenues, New York
When: The long-term exhibition opens today. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, last entry at 8 p.m.; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays. On May 15, "Body Worlds" closes at 4:30 p.m.
How much: $26 for adults, $23.50 for seniors and $20.50 for children 4 to 12 years old. Call (866) 987-9692 or visit discoverytsx.com.