The location is an oddity in itself. Situated in a warehouse on the 3rd avenue industrial strip of Gowanus, one would not expect to find a museum. But as of last June, The Morbid Anatomy Museum has called this place home. In a building that has since been updated with some glass windows and a thick coat of black paint The Morbid Anatomy Museum is now a lovely, stark contrast to the mucky shipping containers and storage units surrounding it.
Upon entering you are welcomed into a small gift shop/café where you can sip a hot cappuccino next to a freshly taxidermic fox or a specimen jar of rodent foetusus. It’s comfortable. Upstairs there is an exhibit space and a small library, downstairs there is more exhibit space that is also used as a room for lecture series and events. In this gift shop alone you can get lost in the many curiosities that line the shelves for purchase.
But I found it quite interesting to look around and observe the people who were coming to the museum. There were of course the folks that you would expect to see in a place like this- each representing some combination of steampunk, goth, and modern hipster. Likely people predisposed to the dark, historic and scientific. Appropriate.
But sprinkled all around was, well, everybody else. The woman staring intently at the wax moulage of a syphilis outbreak looks like the woman you’d find sifting through the sale rack of sweaters at Banana Republic. The man calling his friend to take photos of him with a framed taxidermic bat is the same man you’d find yelling drunken profanities at a Rangers game. All of these people under one roof brought together by none other than… morbidity.
In our modern culture death is something with which we have a strange relationship. Or rather, a distant one. Death is morose and Victorian, it’s unpleasant and therefore treated like it doesn’t exist. We push it out of our consiousness unless otherwise forced to acknowledge it. But deep inside we all know it’s there. It is as present in our lives as being alive; two sides of the same coin. Luckily there are some of us, like the enthusiasts directing the museum, who are more ostensibly fascinated by death and all that surrounds it. They’ve created a space that allows others, (who for one reason or another are not as enamored), the chance to indulge the secret part that exists in all of us- Morbid Curiosity.
So if you’re not afraid to explore this dark and beautiful realm, be sure to stop by The Morbid Anatomy Museum. It will be well worth it. Even if all you get out of it is a few photos of dead bats!
interesting..!!!