Cabinets of Curiosities
(also known as Wunderkammer or wonder-rooms) were collections of types of objects we now regard as quite separate, but whose boundaries were in the Renaissance yet to be defined. They included specimens we would now categorise as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, including cabinet paintings, and antiquities. Some belonged to rulers, aristocrats or merchants, others to early practitioners of science in Europe, and were precursors to museums of different sorts.
The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. Two of the most famously described 17th century cabinets were those of Ole Worm (also known as Olaus Wormius) (1588-1654), and Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680). These 17th-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, and other types of objects. Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction, including apparently mythical creatures. Worm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian Lamb, a wooly fern thought to be a plant/sheep fabulous creature. However he was also responsible for identifying the narwhal's tusk as coming from a whale rather than a unicorn, as most owners of these believed. The specimens displayed were often collected during exploring expeditions and trading voyages.
Cabinets of curiosities would often serve scientific advancement when images of their contents were published. The catalog of Worm's collection, published as the Museum Wormianum (1655), used the collection artifacts as a starting point for Worm's speculations on philosophy, science, natural history, and more.
In 1587 Gabriel Kaltemarckt advised Christian I of Saxony that three types of item were indispensable in forming a "Kunstkammer" or art collection: firstly sculptures and paintings; secondly "curious items from home or abroad"; and thirdly "antlers,horns, claws, feathers and other things belonging to strange and curious animals" [1] When Albrecht Dürer visted the Netherlands in 1521, apart from artworks he sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns, a piece of coral, some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the East Indies.[2]
"Male Narwhal or Unicorn", here still with his tuskThe Ashmolean Museum in Oxford inherited the collection of Elias Ashmole, itself largely derived from John Tradescant the elder and his son John Tradescant the younger. Parts of this are still displayed together, giving a good sense of the diversity of these collections. What was left of the famous and unique complete stuffed Dodo was passed to the new Pitt Rivers Museum in the nineteenth century. An important Native American artifact, Chief Powhatan's Mantle, the cloak of the father of Pocohontas, remains in the collection.
Obviously cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them. Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections. A rather under-used example, stronger in art than other areas, was the Studiolo of Francesco I, the first Medici Grand-Duke of Tuscany. Frederick III of Denmark, who added Worm's collection to his own after Worm's death, was another such monarch. A third example is the Kunstkamera founded by Peter the Great in Saint Petersburg in 1727. The fabulous Hapsburg Imperial collection, included important Aztec artifacts, including the feather head-dress or crown of Montezuma now in the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna.
Similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex Kunstschränke produced in the early 17th century by the Augsburg merchant, diplomat and collector Philipp Hainhofer. These were cabinets in the sense of pieces of furniture, made from all imaginable exotic and expensive materials and filled with contents and ornamental details intended to reflect the entire cosmos on a miniature scale. The best preserved example is the one given by the city of Augsburgto King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in 1632, which is kept in the Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala.
In Los Angeles, California, the modern-day Museum of Jurassic Technology anachronistically seeks to recreate the sense of wonder that the old cabinets of curiosity once aroused. See Weschler book below.
This idea of a cabinet of curiosities has been drawn from in recent publications and performances. Cabinet magazine is a quarterly magazine of cultural artifacts and obscure historical footnotes. Internet blogger Jason Kottke describes his popular site as a wunderkammer, as it is comprised primarily of links to things that are interesting. Cabinet of Natural Curiosities (band), a Brooklyn-based folk/experimental music and art collective named after Albertus Seba's collection of oddities, has released eclectic folk and improvisational albums based on the idea of the wunderkammer, as well as staging a performance of the Theater of Natural Curiosities at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York. (From Wikapebia- Cabinets of Curiosities)
Beginning of library residency,...
what will be the contents of my time there...
Met library staff today and picked up my key to the room I'm working in. Staff were great, warm, friendly, busy, but helpful and seem interested and excited about what I'm planning to do. They offered lots of suggestions, the use of cords, the possiblity of a son riding a scate board through the book sorting-mchine room..need to learn the term for it... but the really big help was finding that I could use a stack of discontinued books that were being trashed because they were damaged. These books, without covers are lovely shades of creams and bones... with threads and sewing visible at the spine...
Now the library itself.
First impression, overwhelm, Sandra caught me up with the library filing system. Sitting watching how things work is interesting, did that while looking busy, The library is filled with lots of people. lots are curious about me, especially when I take over and start stacking books in my glass studio space on the first floor-fel quite exposed there, nothing like my studio at home... they watch me, that I have a key is noticed. I've put up a sign but the rooms too dark nobody can read it, Sandra suggested a digital/movie presentation out the front of the library...to indicate that I'm here... will do this weekend.
Started on the first of my ideas before I started here... that was to cover some books with bright pink paper...to echo the pink light on the stacks and to photograph them as an animation...bit nervous that I will interupt people looking for books...worked the Australian history section, nobody seemed interested in it this afternoon...
dont know if this worked...I find the aesthetics of the library space hard. It is visually hard, metal, angels...order, systems. Any break with that looks messy very easily, which is often my way. So it will be interesting to see how I can interect with the building, the staff and the collection...what will be possible and how to negotiate each step.
Interested in what?...whats not in the collection, how to engage people with the collection in different ways. The fiction is all on one side, orange, except the litrature, pink, its put with the non-fiction, what does this mean...want to get some critical threads running into and through the collection, treasure chest idea mentioned a few times, I'm thinking at the moment of making a flash presentation that refers to certain books and either quotes certain passages or indicates where the good bits are in them, found some cheap erotica in the throw out pile...the good bits were on page 108 and 115. Thats important info. Or when the woman got her man, or when the guy gets shot or when the dog finds the boy stuff like that. Its sort of dumb, but interesting infomation. Sort of over helpful. Offered in a semi official frame it could be both quite silly and interesting to see what people do with it.
trying two other frames for films...the first photographing gardens
, from books... weird.
the other idea is the 'contents page possibility'...this collection would feature 'the contents ' pages of twenty or so books, 
could be made into books and also digital presentations...
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