Bodies: The Exhibition

Bodies... The Exhibition is an exhibition showcasing preserved human bodies dissected to display bodily systems. It opened in Tampa, Florida on August 20, 2005. It is similar to, though not affiliated with, the exhibition Body Worlds (which opened in 1995). The exhibit displays internal organs and organic systems, bodies staged in active poses, and fetuses in various stages of development.

The show is operated by Premier Exhibitions which presents and promotes similar exhibits including "Bodies Revealed", and "Our Body: The Universe Within", and other entertainment exhibits.

Concerns have been raised about the bodies' origins and about the ethics of viewing human remains, especially for children and Catholics.

This show appeared in the following 80 places: Albuquerque, Amsterdam, Athens, Atlanta, Atlantic City, Barcelona, Belgrade, Bogotá, Boise, Branson, Bratislava, Brisbane, Bucharest, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Burlington, Chicoutimi, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Concepción, Córdoba, Detroit, Dublin, Durham, Fort Lauderdale, Gdansk, Greensboro, Haifa, Hartford, Honolulu, Houston, Idaho Falls, Indianapolis, Istanbul, Jaffa, Kraków, Las Vegas, Lexington, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Miami, Montreal, New York, Niagara Falls, Omaha, Ostena, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Prague, Providence, Puerto Rico, Quebec City, Recife, Riga, Rotterdam, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Jose (Costa Rica), San Salvador, Santiago de Chile, São Paulo, Seattle, Shreveport, Sofia, Tampa, Tegucigalpa, Tel-Aviv, Timisoara, Tucson, Tulsa, Vienna,Vilnius, Warsaw, Washington D.C, Winnipeg, and Zagreb.

The exhibit is set up so that one starts at the skeletal system, and more layers (muscular, nervous, circulatory, digestive, respiratory, urinary, and reproductive systems; as well as fetal development and the treated body) are added in successive rooms. Containing about twenty bodies in total, each exhibition uses real human bodies that have been preserved permanently by a process called "polymer preservation" so that they will not decay. This exhibition is organized by the publicly traded corporation, Premier Exhibitions Incorporated, which also staged Bodies Revealed first in Seoul, South Korea and more recently in the US. The company received the cadavers for research from the Chinese government, who donated them because all the bodies at the time of death had no close next of kin or immediate families to claim the bodies. The dissections took place at the Dalian University in Liaoning, China and the resulting specimens were leased to Premier Exhibitions for the five-year duration of the show.

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Wikipedia