Why People Sound Like Instruments, and Instruments Look Like People

Why People Sound Like Instruments, and Instruments Look Like People captures a recurring idea that the body and sound are inseparable from instrument design. The Met's Musical Bodies exhibition opens on Friday and surveys thousands of years of objects—paintings, prints, fashion, sculpture and instruments—to reveal shared ideas about embodiment and sound. Curator Bradley Strauchen-Scherer notes that many works reference the body in form or decoration, inviting visitors to rethink music as a universal human impulse. The show also invites visitors to make music, including a touch-responsive hallway floor designed to produce harmonious tones, developed by Jeff Crouse and David Van Tieghem.