UCL’s Jeremy Bentham joins exhibition in New York

UCL has mounted a meticulously-planned operation to enable its spiritual forebear Jeremy Bentham to achieve in death what he always wanted to do in life: visit America. For the first time since the philosopher's death more than 180 years ago, his auto-icon - comprising his skeleton, wax head, clothes, hat, chair and walking stick - is to leave UCL and be transported abroad to the US to go on display at the Met Breuer museum in New York from March to July. Bentham will be part of The Met's exhibition, "Like Life: Sculpture, Color and the Body, 1300-now", which will bring together sculptures by artists from Donatello, El Greco, Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas to Louise Bourgeois, Jeff Koons and Yinka Shonibare. The exhibition, featuring international loans alongside works from the Met's own collections, will document 700 years of sculptural practice from 14th century Europe to the present. Bentham will be a centrepiece in a glass case alongside masterpieces and little-seen works. It was always Bentham's ambition to go to America but one he never achieved. Before his death on June 6 1832, however, he laid down in his will the terms of his continued "life" as an auto-icon, allegedly carrying around in his pocket at the end of his life the glass eyes to be used after he died.