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Images Courtesy of the Fowler Museum

Your last chance to smile and gawk at "Bodies"

by ajay singh
today staff writer

Across cultures and regions, people relate to the human body in ways that are primarily psychological, physical or medical. To perceive the human body intellectually is rarer — and just what a captivating exhibition at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has done.

“UCLA Collects! Bodies of Knowledge” is a riotously eclectic display of anatomical specimens, anthropological objets d’art, religious relics, statues, photographs, drawings and assorted curiosities that challenge conventional norms of exhibiting artifacts. The material is provocatively juxtaposed to encourage viewers to explore not the information about individual objects but the cross-cultural, interdisciplinary connections between them.

The exhibition, which ends Aug. 21, draws from five UCLA archives: the Fowler; the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at the Hammer Museum; the Department of Special Collections in the Charles E. Young Research Library; the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library; and the Rock Art Archive at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

The show is modeled on the “Wunderkammern,” or “cabinet of wonders,” which proliferated across museums in late Renaissance Europe, displaying the odd and the marvelous from private collections. The result is an unusual feast for the eyes — and yes, that valuable part of our bodies does have an entire section devoted to it. Other sections include the torso, bodies in motion, the head and face, the brain and the hands.

One of the most compelling images is a single sheet from a large book dating back to 1747. Deceptively titled “Catalog of Bones and Muscles of the Human Body,” it shows a skeletal figure posed elegantly in front of a huge grazing rhinoceros. The idea is to represent “homo perfectus,” the ideal anatomical specimen, in control of the world, personifying the values of the Enlightenment.

This is one of those exhibitions that makes visitors gawk and smile, whether at the teal-blue Staffordshire jar for storing leeches or at the clever case study of “the pre and post brain of a new father.” A sign next to a striking representation of African women showing off their long necks and scarred cheeks sums up the show’s curious allure: “Beauty isn’t innate — it has to be embellished as a work of art.”