{"id":629073,"date":"2026-06-09T11:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/629073\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:10:09","slug":"central-to-human-identity-exhibition-at-the-met-connects-bodies-with-musical-instruments-exhibitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/629073\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Central to human identity\u2019: exhibition at the Met connects bodies with musical instruments | Exhibitions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Music<\/a> is very much at the heart of what it is that makes us human. While there is debate over precisely why we first started making music \u2013 with leading theories arguing that it arose for purposes of hunting, communication, spiritual practice, and forging community bonds \u2013 what\u2019s not debated is that music-making is something we pour ourselves deeply into, forging intimate relationships with our instruments.<\/p>\n

The Met<\/a>\u2019s compelling new exhibition Musical Bodies<\/a> looks at 4,000 years of musical history, teasing out the complex web of interrelationships between the sounds made through human bodies and the many instruments we have used to alter and augment those sounds. From singing, whistling and bodily percussion to a vast array of constructed objects, the show is a rich exploration of how our musical identities contribute to the notion of what it is to be human.<\/p>\n

According to the exhibition curator, Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, it all began when the Met was renovating its galleries, meaning that Strauchen-Scherer had to physically transport some 600 of the institution\u2019s musical instruments by hand. \u201cOf course, as a curator you know your collection well,\u201d said Strauchen-Scherer, \u201cbut actually having each and every one of those instruments in my hands, looking at them in an up-close way, I started to think about the common threads connecting all this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurdy-gurdy; carved ivory, turned ivory & purified sycamore, with tortoiseshell edging, silver & brass piqu\u00e9 work & paste imitation stones. French; c 1770-85. Photograph: Barnard, Pip\/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York<\/p>\n

Those threads span thousands of years of human history and six of the world\u2019s continents, moving from African drums to ancient Egyptian clappers, Prince\u2019s androgynous guitars, Renaissance violins from Germany, a Tibetan kangling, and cutting-edge MiMu Midi gloves that translate movement into sound.<\/p>\n

Running through Musical Bodies is an implicit thesis that the musical instruments humans have been fashioning over the centuries are receptacles for our yearning; sites for our identity and imagination to play out over. In their construction and design, they absorb our creative spirit, letting our humanity spill out into them and take shape in their form, decoration and distinctive sounds.<\/p>\n

For instance, take Prince\u2019s \u201csymbol guitar<\/a>,\u201d which he commissioned in 1993 and was a staple of his stage performances. Looking like a mashup of a trumpet and the Venus and Mars symbols associated with the female and male genders, the icon was said to have emerged from Prince\u2019s record label disputes<\/a> \u2013 changing his name to that symbol was effectively a clever way<\/a> to wiggle out of restrictive record label deals.<\/p>\n

Installation image of Musical Bodies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Photograph: Eileen Travell<\/p>\n

The truth, however, was far more complicated. Strauchen-Scherer said the symbol and its attendant guitar was the result of a deeply personal process of personal exploration for Prince<\/a>, emerging out of his seemingly ceaseless creative energies, fusing his<\/a> gender<\/a> evolution<\/a> with his creative<\/a> musical<\/a> pursuits<\/a>. \u201cEven before the record label narrative, Prince was working with his producers to express the totality of male and female with his shows,\u201d Strauchen-Scherer said. \u201cThere\u2019s that wonderful lyric from I Would Die 4 U \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m not a woman \/ I\u2019m not a man \/ I am something that you\u2019ll never understand\u2019 \u2013 that just sums up everything there.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re talking about personal expression, it doesn\u2019t get more basic than our voices, which Strauchen-Scherer likened to the musical instrument par excellence: \u201cThe human voice is the first sound that we make in the world, and it\u2019s held up in many cultures as the thing that all instruments aspire to.\u201d She also noted that it is common practice for those learning to play an instrument to concurrently learn to sing, as the grounding in the human voice makes one\u2019s playing so much the richer.<\/p>\n

The Music Lesson, Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory, c 1765, modeled by Joseph Willems after two engravings by Fran\u00e7ois Boucher. Photograph: Coscia Joseph\/The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York<\/p>\n

Among the voices represented in Musical Bodies is the hip-hop collective the Beatbox House<\/a>, whose extraordinary ability to mimic intricate drum sets with just their mouths defies belief. Effectively, in trying to emulate drum kits that were frequently beyond the financial reach of the early hip-hop artists who pioneered the form, beatboxers invented new possibilities for our voices. \u201cIt pushes the boundaries as it makes people think again about the human voice,\u201d said Strauchen-Scherer.<\/p>\n

Another fantastic voice is that is that of Molly Lewis<\/a>, the international whistling<\/a> champion whose musical talents reached a global audience in 2023 as a part of the film Barbie\u2019s soundtrack. Although whistling like Lewis\u2019s is an art form unto itself, Strauchen-Scherer said humans first whistled for eminently practical reasons. \u201cPeople were originally whistling to communicate with each other,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a sound that you can hear when you\u2019re spread out.<\/p>\n

Lewis\u2019s vocal talents added a very emotionally rich and whimsical backdrop to the poignant scene in which the Barbie film<\/a> spotlights Ruth Handler (portrayed by Rhea Perlman), the creator of the first Barbie doll. Lewis\u2019s gracefully looping vocal sounds make a fascinating counterpoint to beatboxing\u2019s staccato movement, showcasing just how diverse the human voice can be.<\/p>\n

One of the larger subsections in Musical Bodies documents how musical instruments have long been a part of courtship \u2013 and how they have even been stand-ins for the sexual act itself. In the right hands, these devices take on heavy symbolic weight, and even just holding one \u2013 much less playing it \u2013 can be a norm-shattering gesture.<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, the Japanese woodblock print titled Bun\u2019ya no Asayasu, made by the prolific 19th-century artist Utagawa Kunisada. It features a woman suggestively holding a shakuhachi \u2013 a large Japanese flute \u2013 up to her mouth, with a gleeful expression on her face. According to Strauchen-Scherer, a woman handling a flute like that would have been considered quite risque at the time.<\/p>\n

Musical Bodies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photograph: Eileen Travell<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Japanese culture, as in western culture until fairly recently,\u201d she explained, \u201cit was considered taboo and very sexually suggestive for women to play instruments like flutes and recorders, anything that goes in your mouth. I mean, the slang goes right along with it \u2013 think about the expression, \u2018playing the skin flute\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the well-known painting The Musician by the 17th-century Dutch artist Bartholomeus van der Helst, one of the most celebrated portraitists of the golden age<\/a> of Dutch painting. Featuring a woman tuning an instrument in order to play it, the subtext of the painting is quite clear, Strauchen-Scherer said. \u201cShe\u2019s tuning a lute, she\u2019s practically falling out of her dress,\u201d she said. \u201cTuning a musical instrument is a well-known allegory for foreplay.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Strauchen-Scherer hopes that audiences will come away from Musical Bodies with a new appreciation for music \u2013 which admittedly can become easily taken for granted when it\u2019s plastered as wallpaper in virtually every store and cafe, and when we\u2019re continuously piping it into our ears via streaming services. \u201cI hope this will re-center music for people,\u201d she said. \u201cI want audiences to see music as central to human identity, what we do. Music is for all of us because we are instruments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Music is very much at the heart of what it is that makes us human. While there is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-629073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}