They're all wearing underpants. This either means that Duane Hanson thought his superrealistic sculptures of ordinary people were real enough that they deserved their dignity, or that he felt the degree of illusion he wanted required the inclusion of garments that would never be seen. It's probably a little of both.

The main room of Hanson's retrospective yields one of the strangest sights you're ever likely to see in a New York museum. It's Madame Tussaud's meets the Mall of America, a spooky group of sleepwalkers caught in a state of suspended animation. It's like a meat locker of American -- some would say ugly American -- types: tourists, kids, old people, a shopper, a mother and a cleaning lady (one of only two black people in the show). In the adjoining galleries you can see their kin: construction workers, a cop, a cowboy, a waitress and a house painter. It's a theme park of white America. Weirded-out and mesmerized, you wander among this clutch of familiar strangers as you would the frozen figures at Pompeii, thinking, What will people make of this sculpture in the 23rd century?

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