Smithsonian Institution visitors become "performers" in a new exhibit on the homeless: they can lie in a morgue, fight off an attacker, get arrested, even listen to a prostitute having sex.
"This is a risk," acknowledged Kimberly Camp, director of the Smithsonian Institution's Experimental Gallery where the exhibit opens Friday. "People will love it and people will hate it.""Etiquette of the Undercaste" uses the voices of real homeless people as it takes visitors from the crib of a drug-addicted baby through dark alleys to jail and a park bench. Sirens blare and profanities are shouted.
In one section of the tour, the visitor is asked to recline in a bed and listen to a prostitute having sex with a john and being pressured to accept $200.
"Who is smarter, the girl who gets paid for it or the one who gives it away for free?" a woman's voice asks.
Smithsonian Secretary Robert McC. Adams says he expects some visitors to be taken aback by the exhibit's "rather harsh" language and avant-garde portrayal of street life. The museum recommends children under 12 not go through.
"Museums were thought to be storehouses of idealized mansions," but now are struggling to define a new relationship to the contemporary world, he said. "There are no guidelines as to how far you can go."
During a simulated police bust, the visitor is told to hold out his or her hands and face a gun while an officer shouts insults.