Anatomy in the Gallery

In my recent trips to Chicago, I decided to get off the beaten path and try and make it to more places I've never been, which has led to some gems (the Bahá'í temple in Wilmette, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 18th St station) and some misfires. I wasn't sure how to classify the International Museum of Surgical Science, which does feature a beautiful building right on the lake (modeled on Marie Antoinette's summer cottage) to house its reverent artwork depicting great healers of the last 2000 years, and a really great gift shop with plush microbes (the red blood cell with googly eyes is cute as can be, and I'm kind of fond of the soft and squiggly syphilis bacterium as well). Sometimes you can like the idea behind something more than the actual implementation, like I have to love a medical museum with its own medical themed art gallery, no matter how strange that art may turn out to be, like an installation of what looks like pasta dried onto construction paper that's selling for $400.

And speaking of their gallery, the IMSS is hosting a gallery opening this Friday May 2 from 5pm-8pm for their newest exhibitions, ExtraSensory and Two Spaces, One Body, which both look extraordinarily weird and fascinating. For anyone living in the Near North area, this might be an interesting place to stop off on a Friday evening for a free drink. And given the general WTF quality of the place, I definitely recommend seeing the IMSS for free, which is why I went on a Tuesday, but the new exhibitions do look cool. The IMSS is between North and Schiller on Michigan Ave, facing the lake.