A traveling exhibition featuring eight full plastinated human bodies and more than 100 real human organs is set to open at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium on October 2, running through November 29. The show, called Bodies – The Science Within, arrives in the historic downtown venue with organizers pledging that every specimen was obtained ethically, not through coercion or criminal activity.
General admission runs $24 for adults and $12 for children, with seniors and veterans paying $20.50, according to The Sacramento Bee. Those prices run slightly higher than what the exhibit charged during its U.S. debut in Denver earlier this year, where adult tickets were $20 and children’s tickets were $10, per Visit Denver. After Sacramento, the exhibit is scheduled to move on to Spokane, Washington.
The exhibition is organized around eight themed galleries covering systems like respiration and movement, and it includes lessons on basic anatomy — including an explanation for why one human lung is larger than the other. The specimens are preserved through plastination, a technique in which body fluids and soluble fats are replaced with liquid polymers such as silicone rubber or epoxy resin inside a vacuum chamber, according to Body Worlds. Preparing a single full-body specimen for plastination can take between 500 and 1,000 hours of manual labor before the polymer impregnation even begins.
Not Affiliated With Body Worlds, Despite Similarities
Plastination was invented by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, whose Body Worlds exhibition first debuted in 1995 and has faced its own allegations over the years that some cadavers belonged to prisoners or homeless people, according to the seed reporting. Bodies – The Science Within is not affiliated with Body Worlds, the Bee reports, though the two shows use the same underlying preservation science and cover similar ground…