Meet Animal Meat - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Gunter von Hagens
The Rearing Horse with Rider © Gunther von Hagens, Institute for Plastination, Heidelberg, Germany,
Hagens founded the Heidelberg-based Institute
for Plastination, which offers plastinated
specimens for educational use and for Body
Worlds, which premiered in Japan in 1995. To
date, the exhibitions have been viewed bymore
than 28 million people, in cities countries across
Europe, Asia, and North America. His continued
efforts to present the exhibitions, even in the face
of opposition and often blistering attacks are, he
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says, the burden he must bear as a public
anatomist and teacher. "The anatomist alone is
assigned a specific role-he is forced in his daily
work to reject the taboos and convictions that
people have about death and the dead. I myself
am not controversial, but my exhibitions are,
because I am asking viewers to transcend their
fundamental beliefs and convictions about our
joint and inescapable fate."