I draw dead people......and want to draw them.

January 6, 2010 4:35 PM

Am I allowed to bring a sketchbook and a collapsable stool into the Body Worlds exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre?

Googling and gets me a lot of hits on organized artist's nights with live models but I'm heading tomorrow morning out to see the exhibit and I'm wondering if they let people sit down to sketch and if I should bother schlepping a stool along.

posted by bonobothegreat to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

The exhibit is famously big on copyright, fighting people posting the pics online so I'd say "maybe." It has absolutely no pictures on Wikipedia.

Try calling the museum.
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:38 PM on January 6, 2010

My experience from when they were in San Diego was a very strict no OBVIOUS sketching and absolutely no pictures. While I was there I actually saw two people escorted out for taking photographs.
posted by banannafish at 5:06 PM on January 6, 2010

When I saw it in Vancouver a few years ago, I was not allowed to take photos but was allowed to sketch the models after signing a form that said that I would not distribute the sketches anywhere. This was a few years ago, though, so the rules may have changed.
posted by tickingclock at 5:17 PM on January 6, 2010

When one of them was in here they had a special day for artists, you should check out the science centers website.
posted by thylacine at 5:49 PM on January 6, 2010

Thanks for the answers, everyone.

I'll just try calling in the morning and see if I can reach the proper authority.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:15 PM on January 6, 2010

I got kicked out of Bodyworlds in London for drawing. They very nearly confiscated my sketchbook too but I made a scene. When I pointed out that I had seen other people sketching, the guard informed me that 'sketching' was okay but 'drawing' wasn't, and I was clearly drawing! That's interesting about getting a waiver.. I guess I'll look into that next time around.
posted by Erasmouse at 2:45 AM on January 7, 2010

Addendum: this was in I think 2002? It's important to note that this was the Von Hagen exhibition, the original Body Worlds, and he's, yeah, really into aggressive copyright protection. Similar anatomy displays operate differently- I know people who have gone in drawing groups to Bodies Revealed and had no trouble. On the downside there's some ghoulish scandal about where they got the corpses from, yikes.

Since my experience with Body Worlds I have to say I've been a bit cynical about Von Hagen's protestations about his pure concern for education and science... though he may have to assert this for legal reasons-- I believe display of human remains for 'entertainment' is illegal in the UK and there was a legal battle to get the show allowed here at all.
posted by Erasmouse at 3:01 AM on January 7, 2010

Just to follow this up, I decided to wait for the Sketch Night. It was great, I found that the exhibits were really useful for the kind of study I wanted to do and organizers had a few life models posing along side the displays.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:27 AM on February 25, 2010