Plastination Exhibitions
For the first 20 years, plastination was used to preserve small specimens for medical study. It was not until the early 1990s that the equipment was developed to make it possible to plastinate whole body specimens, each specimen taking up to 1,500 man hours to prepare. The first exhibition of whole bodies was displayed by von Hagens in Japan in 1995.
Over the next two years, Von Hagens developed the Körperwelten (BODY WORLDS) public exhibitions, showing whole bodies plastinated in lifelike poses and dissected to show various structures and systems of human anatomy. The earliest exhibitions were presented in the Far East and in Germany, and Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS exhibitions have subsequently been hosted by museums and venues in more than 50 cities worldwide, attracting more than 29 million visitors..
Gunther von Hagens' BODY WORLDS exhibitions are the original, precedent-setting public anatomical exhibitions of real human bodies, and the only anatomical exhibits that use donated bodies, willed by donors to the Institute for Plastination for the express purpose of serving the BODY WORLDS mission to educate the public about health and anatomy. To date, more than 10,000 people have agreed to donate their bodies to Institute for Plastination.
In 2004, Premier Exhibitions began their "Bodies Revealed" exhibition in Blackpool, England which ran from August through October 2004. In 2005 and 2006 the company opened their Bodies Revealed and Bodies The Exhibition exhibitions in Seoul (South Korea), Tampa (Florida, USA) and New York City, (USA). The West Coast exhibition site opened on 22 June 2006 at the Tropicana Resort & Casino Las Vegas, USA . As of June 2009, BODIES... The Exhibition is showing at the Ambassador Theatre (Dublin) in Dublin, Ireland. The exhibition is in Istanbul, Turkey until the end of March 2011.
Plastination galleries are offered in a few college medical schools including University of Michigan (said to be the nation's largest such lab) and the Vienna University Gunther von Hagens maintains a permanent exhibition of plastinates and plastination at the Plastinarium in Guben, Germany.
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