Netherlands ‘Corpus’ exhibit lets you get an inside look at what makes you, you
By TOBY STERLING
The Associated Press
A 115-foot high seated human figure greets visitors in Oegstgeest, Netherlands. A visitor observes teeth in a model of the human mouth as he stands on a rubber tongue complete with taste buds. Tonsils hang in the foreground at the Corpus museum.
OEGSTGEEST, Netherlands | Strap on 3-D glasses and watch holograms of cartoon sperm sprinting to fertilize an egg. Climb inside a gigantic nose, enjoy the smell of fresh hay, then feel the wind blast on your neck when it sneezes. Walk across a bouncy rubber tongue complete with taste buds and realistic burping noises in the background.
This all might sound weird or flat-out gross. But the makers of “Corpus,” a new attraction in the Netherlands, are hoping that a combination amusement park and health education museum will encourage kids to take better care of their own bodies.
Even before Corpus opened last month in Oegstgeest, 21 miles southwest of Amsterdam, it was already a local landmark. The building incorporates a 115-foot-high seated human figure into its structure. But all the detail is inside.
The walls and halls are modeled with fiberglass to resemble the inside of a giant human body, giving visitors the sensation of being shrunk down to a tiny scale.
Visitors begin their tour via an escalator that carries them through a wound in the giant figure’s calf. Once inside, they see an exhibition on what happens when a wood splinter pierces the skin.
Then it’s on to the sit-down “Uterus Theater.” That’s the one with the cartoon sperm race.
“We chose not to show sexual activity but actually just the fertilization of the egg cell by the seed cell and how that develops” into a fetus, said Tom Voute, one of a raft of physicians hired as advisers on the project. He said the information in Corpus is medically accurate.
“I think that it gives information that will give people the itch to learn more,” he said.
When the show is over, the entire theater platform is lifted to the next floor with hydraulic pumps.
Next is a display on digestion, featuring blocks of cheese, the Dutch national treat. After visitors watch a video showing stomach acid dissolving them, the curds’ progress through a hallway-size intestinal system.
While the cheese is heading downward, visitors progress up to exhibits on the heart, lungs, mouth, nose and ear.
Visitors reach the summit in — where else? — the brain, where they take seats around a cluster of display panels built atop model neurons, which then project images onto a larger screen at the top of the domed space to give an impression of how consciousness might work.
The project is the dream of businessman Henri Remmers, who arranged $31 million in private funding and won the endorsement of the Dutch Health Ministry.
Remmers said he hoped when people learn more about the “unique mechanism” that the human body is, “then you’ll have more respect for your own body, and possibly treat it a little more carefully.”
Corpus is in Oegstgeest, Netherlands, 21 miles southwest of Amsterdam. Hours are 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. Admission is $25.50 for adults, $21 for children 8-14; children younger than 8 are not permitted. Details: corpus-experience.nl.
Getting there: Corpus is on the A44 highway between Amsterdam and The Hague, reached most easily by car. Trains available from the Leiden station in Amsterdam or The Hague Central station. By bus, from Leiden, bus 57 to Lisse (Snellius stop), or from The Hague, bus 32 toward Katwijk (Transferium A44 stop).
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