The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has opened a new exhibition exploring the profound connection between musical instruments and the human body. While not exclusively focused on the piano, Musical Bodies offers fascinating insights that will undoubtedly resonate with World Piano News readers
Encompassing over 4,000 years of music history and art, Musical Bodies features some 130 artifacts. These include over 50 exhibits from The Met’s own Department of Musical Instruments alongside rare loans from major global collections.
“This multisensory exhibition is the first to explore—through remarkable instruments, objects, and works of art—the fascinating ways in which sound, musical objects and the human form have been in conversation for millennia. Musical Bodies is a show that will resonate, fascinate and inspire.”
Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and CEO
The exhibition was conceived by curator Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, prompted by the question, “Why are so many instruments shaped and decorated like the human body?”
Exhibition Format
Musical Bodies is organised into six distinct thematic sections:
- Instrument as Body
– Bodies as a Template
– From Head to Toe
– Viscera - Body As Instrument
- Superhuman
– Blurred Boundaries
– Ergonomics
– Healing Bodies - Diverse Beings
– Gender
– Cultural/Place
– Persona
– Belief - Passionate Beings
– Sensual Bodies
– Seduction
– Marriage
– Sex - Transient Beings
– Memento Mori (trans. “Remember You Must Die)
– Paradise and Perdition
– Proxies
– Between Worlds
All manner of amazing historic, rare, and exotic musical instruments make up the exhibits. Visitors will encounter everything from cartoon-character-shaped guitars and phallic whistles to a mannequin bass guitar, anatomically sculpted stringed instruments, tap shoes, MIDI gloves, musical clothing, and ancient body-shaped drums.
The main piano and keyboard-related exhibits include:
Psaltery, Tolbecque, 1896 (Transient Beings / Paradise and Perdition): A box zither and widely considered a main forerunner of the piano. Historically, the psaltery’s box symbolized the human torso and the body of Christ. With its ten strings, stretched across the sound holes like human sinews, it is thought to explicitly evoke Christ’s wounded body.
Harpsichord, Trasuntino, 1531 (Passionate Beings / Seduction): This rare, single-manual instrument by Alessandro Trasuntino features an outer lid and casework adorned with Venus, Cupid and other modestly attired figures. Lifting the lid not only lets the sound ring out, but also reveals a semi-naked Titian-styled Venus.
PianoArc 360, PianoArc, 2025 (Superhuman / Ergoniomics): this massive circular controller keyboard features 288 keys arranged across three contiguous sections. It’s built on a Sumo Stand, specially designed for the show, to create the ultimate ergonomic playing experience.
Liberace’s “Piano Keys” Suit, Jim Lapidus, 1973, (Diverse Beings / Persona): No exploration of musical persona would be complete without reference to Mr Showmanship. On display is Liberace’s iconic, rhinestone-encrusted “Piano Keys” suit.
Exhibition Catalogue
A superbly detailed 228 page fully illustrated hardcover book accompanies the Musical Bodies exhibition, providing further information on the interaction and cross-fertilisation between the piano (and other instruments) and the human body. Available now from The Met Store, price $50. Alternatively you can purchase the book from Amazon (click here) …possibly cheaper, and as a result World Piano News may receive a small commission which would help fund this site.
Musical Bodies runs at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 199 until September 27, 2026.
Website: Metropolitan Museum of Art / Musical Bodies
The exhibition is made possible by Barbara Tober, the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund.
Exhibition photos by Eileen Travell, courtesy of The Met.