If you’d like to show up your HAA roommate, skip the Warhols and uncover some of the Sackler’s more bizarre pieces, largely found in the medieval collection on the fourth floor. And since you don’t have to pay to get in, it’s easy to poke your nose into a few galleries and pretend to be cultured.
• Public service announcements for STIs weren’t a 20th century innovation. Head to the fourth floor and find the first known representation of a man with syphilis. (Hint: He’s wearing a feathered cap.)
• The fourth floor is also packed with timepieces, but only one has the hours painted on the inside of a man’s thighs. Find the image of this human sundial, and read the curator’s note. (Hint: It’s fairly grotesque, and oddly sexualized.)
• This one is for History of Science nerds. Find a post-Copernican book showing the planets revolving around the Earth. (Hint: It can also function as a sundial.)
• There are a lot of rhinoceroses on the fourth floor. Yeah, it’s weird. But nearly all of them are versions of the same rhino who died in a shipwreck between Lisbon and Rome when the King of Portugal tried to give it to the Pope. Find the one print of a different rhinoceros.
• Suza Geer Berah Geer was famous for eating raw animals whole in 18th century India. Head downstairs to the second floor and find a step-by-step diagram of how to eat a raw sheep.
• BONUS: Find a standing Buddha without a face or hands.