BYOB: Bring your own brain
Exhibit Review | Thru May 4, 2003
Mary Lee Pappas
NUVO, Published January 29, 2003
A deep muffled heartbeat seductively draws you into this hands-on exhibit. Your own brain will determine if you enjoy it - if you can stomach the reproduction dog brains. Will your soft, gelatin-textured brain remember the gory skull of Phineas Gage whose head was penetrated by a rod during an 1848 explosion? Will you relinquish any stigmas you may have had about brain-based diseases and disorders after learning that Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression? That Winston Churchill and Vincent Van Gogh had bipolar disorder?
Author, mental health advocate and Walter"s daughter, Kathy Cronkite, spoke at the member"s preview last Friday and said, "Learning disabilities may just be a different way to learn that may not fit in with the school system." Parents with children labeled by their teachers as generically dyslexic or ADD understand this all too well. Our brains make us uniquely who we are. An exhibit display says it best: "Your sense of who you are comes from an interior movie your brain constantly creates. You are the star, screenwriter, camera operator, producer and director. You are the movie studio and the movie theater. Rather, your brain is."
Commendable programming accompanies the exhibit, from a Brainy Brownies badge workshop to a program about stroke risk factors. Engaging for all audiences, from icky to profound, this exhibit was summed up best by Cronkite: "It"s fabulous."
Brain: The World Inside Your Head is on exhibit at the Indiana State Museum through May 4. Call 232-2637 or log on to www.indianamuseum.org for more information on hours and programs.
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