Metropolitan Museum Opens 'Musical Bodies' Exhibition Exploring 4,000 Years of Human-Shaped Instruments

The Metropolitan Museum of Art's new exhibition "Musical Bodies" examines the connection between human anatomy and musical instrument design across 4,000 years of history and cultures worldwide. Curator Bradley Strauchen-Scherer developed the show around the question of why so many instruments are shaped like or decorated with human body parts. The roughly 130 works on display include ancient Egyptian clappers carved as arms and hands, a 20th-century Congo percussion instrument with breasts and belly, an Indian santal fiddle shaped like a smiling person, and a brass bell from the Niger River region featuring a carved human face. The exhibition also explores how instruments have carried cultural and sexual significance, including a 19th-century Japanese woodblock print depicting a woman playing a shakuhachi flute with erotic subtext. According to Strauchen-Scherer, the exhibition reveals that music-making is fundamental to human survival and identity, challenging the perception that music is an elitist pursuit.