Bone Museum
Content warning: Some freaky human remains stuff in this one!
There is no other thing in the world that every single person has exactly 206 of except for bones. They are with us every single day, growing and changing alongside us and inside us. So why are we so scared of them?
Jon Ferry has been interested in that question from a very young age. He has been collecting skeletons since childhood, when he received a gift of an articulated mouse skeleton from his father. Eventually he amassed a collection so large enough(and became so enthusiastic about using this collection to teach people) that in 2023 he opened the Bone Museum in a basement studio in East Williamsburg.
The Friday after Halloween, my friend Trace and I went to check it out.
The Bone Museum is located in what is clearly a private building, one which we tried and failed to buzz into(we got told later that the buzzer had been on the fritz that day) and instead snuck in behind someone and were so sure we were going to get in trouble but the security guard waved us right past the sign that said Approved Visitors Only and we found ourselves in the middle of one of the most fascinating rooms I have ever been inside.
The docent welcomed us and gave us tickets and informed us that we were standing in one of the largest collections of human skeletons in the United States, and the largest in the State of New York— so even if we were to visit the American Museum of Natural History it wouldn’t have as many skeletons, most of their ones on display are plastic.
Although the shock/gross-out feature is certainly an intentional draw to the museum, it is immensely dedicated to educating its visitors. A timeline took us through the history of skeletons used in medical study, from grave robbers and overseas markets to the advent of people consenting to have their body donated to science to the problems that still remain today— namely, that if you’ve got a skeleton you don’t want there’s not a good way to get rid of it! There are a lot of laws around the disposal of human remains and for good reason, but if someone has, say, inherited a medical study skeleton from a particularly eccentric family member, its unclear what to do with it if they don’t want it. That’s where collectors like Jon Ferry come in.
There’s also a ton of cool scientific information to be learned about bones in a very direct and visual way— like in the picture below showing skulls from infancy to old age, where you can actually see what the soft spot on a baby’s head looks like. It’s an entire diamond-shaped hole on the scalp! That skull hasn’t grown in yet! That’s crazy!
It was also very cool to see a few of the ways that people have made art out of human bones— something about that person being a piece of this artwork in a much more literal sense than most art which is merely inspired by a person!
The human skeleton has been greatly standardized across the medical field— there is one picture of a skeleton in a textbook, and that is what is studied and learned from. When plastic skeletons are used for medical study, this standardization is furthered to a potentially dangerous degree; imagine getting treated by a doctor who’d never seen a human bone in real life! The Bone Museum seeks to emphasize that every skeleton is different, and the more that we’re able to study skeletons which are different in different kinds of ways the more progress we’ll be able to make in medical studies.
I had a fantastic time at the Bone Museum— of all the museums I’ve been to it ranks extremely highly in terms of how excited everyone was to be there. The docent answered all of our many questions, even if they were only tangentially related(Me: “Did Andre the Giant have gigantism?” Her: “Sort of, more specifically he had acromegaly”). All of the guests we encountered were chatting animatedly about all the cool weird stuff they were seeing. Trace was just wandering around, marveling. The Bone Museum truly had made these skeletons come to life.
ADMISSION: $20
GIFT SHOP: Yes
BATHROOM: No
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE: No
Nov 16: Intrepid Museum
Nov 22: Harbor Defense Museum
Nov 30: Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture
Dec 7: Jackie Robinson Museum
Gotta say, this is also one of my favorites of yours! Took the time to really read every single description and the copy is pretty funny! Go off bone museum, there really is everything in NY.
Gross! And cool! Another triumph