Controversy can cultivate curiosity or kill it.
In the case of the Carnegie Science Center's "Bodies ... The Exhibition," controversy helped to pay the bills.
"It's going to meet costs, and that was really our challenge with an exhibit like this," said Ron Baillie, chief program officer for the North Shore science center. "Any time we do that as a nonprofit, we're happy."
The exhibit, which featured 15 plasticized Chinese cadavers and 250 tissue samples and organs, closed Sunday. It attracted 267,000 visitors during its seven-month run, shy of its 300,000-visitor goal.
With tickets ranging from $10 to $22, the exhibit brought in between $2.6 million and $5.9 million. Science center officials said it would be a month before they would know exactly how much money the exhibit raised. They did not reply to requests for an estimate of its total cost or how much they paid Premier Exhibitions Inc. of Atlanta, which owns the exhibit.
It's the first exhibit for which the science center charged a separate admission. Officials were so satisfied with the final result that they will again partner with Premier Exhibitions for "Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition," which opens May 24 and features part of Titanic's hull and almost 300 artifacts from the shipwreck.
Bodies prompted a science center employee to resign, a school district to boycott the exhibit and several prominent Pittsburghers to denounce it as unethical and disrespectful.
"I'm extremely happy that it's gone," said Elaine Catz, former education coordinator for science content at the science center. Catz resigned because of the exhibit and created a Web site to protest it.
Critics argued that the people whose bodies were used in the exhibit did not give permission for them to be displayed. Because China has a history of human-rights violations, critics questioned whether the cadavers had been political prisoners. ABC's "20/20" investigated but did not find conclusive evidence.
"The fact is that there's doubt," Catz said. "And the question is: Should you have this exhibit if there's any doubt? Is it ethical? I don't think so."
About 12,000 middle and high school students attended the exhibit with their schools. Armstrong School District passed a resolution opposing the exhibit as "highly questionable in terms of ethics and appropriateness for students."
Premier Exhibitions, which manages 10 other traveling Bodies exhibits, had dismantled the science center's exhibit by Monday afternoon. That exhibit is destined for Europe, though the exact location for the next display has not been announced.
"They're shipped the same as museum-quality exhibit pieces," said Premier spokeswoman Katherine Morgenstern. "Each specimen has its own crate and packaging, the same as if it were a painting or other artifact."
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