Modern Legacy and Contemporary Cabinets

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Cabinets of curiosities were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were in Renaissance Europe to be defined Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them Classic cabinets of curiosities emerged in the sixteenth century the term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture mododern terminology would have categorized the objects included belonging to natural history sometometimes faked Geology ethnography. archaeology Religes or historical relics works of art. including cabinet paintings and antiquities. In addition to the most famous and best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats meembers of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe formed collections that were precursors to museums Cabinets of curiosities serve not only as collections to reflect the particular interests of the curators. but also as social devices to establish and uphold rank in society There are said to be two main types of cabinets as RJ W Evans notodes There could be the princely cabinet serving a largely representational function. and dominated by aesthetic concerns in a market predilelection for the exotic or the less grandiose the more modest collection of the humanist scholar or virtuoso which served more practical and scientific purposes Evans goes on to explain that no clear distinction existed between the two categories Although collecting was marked by curiosity shading andredulity. and by some sort of universal underlying design In addition to cabinets of curiosity serving as an establisher of socioeconomic status for a curator, These cabinets served as entertainment as particularly illustrated by the proceedings of the Royal Society whoose early meetings were often a sort of open floor to any fellow to exhibit the findings his curiosities led him to However purely educational or investigative these exhibitions may sound. The fellows in this period supported the idea of learned entertainment or the alignment of learning with entertainment This was not unusual as the Royal Society had an earlier history of a love of the marvelous This love was often exploited by eighteenth century natural philosophers seure the attention of their audience during their exhibitions The earliest pictorial record of a natural history cabinet is the engraving in Fernand imperatos. Dily story in Aurale Ples fifteen ninety nine It serves to authenticate its author's credibility as a source of natural history information by showing his open bookcases in which many volumes are stored lying down and stacked in the medieval fashion orr were their spines upward protect the pages from dust Some of the volumes doubtless represent as herbarium Every surface of the vaulted ceiling is occupied with preserved fishes Mammals and curious shes with a stuff crocodile suspended in the center Examples of the corals stand on the bookcases at the left The room is fitted out like a studiolio. with a range of built in cabinets whose fronts can be unlocked and let down to reveal intricately fitted nests of pigeon holes forming architectural units filled with small mineral specimens Above them Stuffed birds stand against panels Inlaid with square polished stone samples Doubtless marbles and jaspers were fitted with pigeon hole compartments. for specimens. Below them a range of cupboards. contains specimen boxes and covered jars In fifteen eighty seven Gabriel Calemark advised Christian I of Saxony The three types of items were indispensable inform in a Kunkama or art collection Firstly, sculptures and paintings. Secondly Cious items from home or abroad Ccerdly Hlers cororns Lve others. and other things belonging to strange and curious animals When Albrech Str visited the Netherlands in fifteen twenty one Far from hardt work He sent back to Nuremberg various animal horns piece of coral some large fish fins and a wooden weapon from the East Indies The highly characteristic range of interests represented in Franz II Franken's painting of sixteen thirty six shows paintings on the wall that range from landscapes including a moonlid scene The genre in itself portrait and a religious picture intermixed with the preserved tropical marine fish. and a string of carved beads Most likely ammber which is both precious and a natural curiosity sculptures, both classical and secular, on the one hand, and modern religions. are represented while on the table are arranged among the exotic sheelves including some tropical ones and a shark's tooth portrait miniatures Gemstones mounted with pearls in a curious catrafoil box A set of Sepia Karoskura woodcuts or drawings and a small still life painting leaning against to flower peas. coins and metals presumably Greek and Roman and Roman derracotta oil lambs a Chinese style brass lock Curious flasks and a blue and white ming porcelain bowl Cunskommer of Rudolph I second Holy Roman emperor ruled fifteen seventy six to sixteen twelve. housed in the Hachin at Prague, was unrivaled north of the Alps. It provided solace and retreat for contemplation. that also serve to demonstrate his imperial magnificence and power in the symbolic arrangement of their display ceremoniously presented to visiting diplomats and magnates Rudolph's uncle, Ferdinand II Archduke of Austria also had a collection organized by his treasurer, Leopold Heibberger Special emphasis on paintings of people with interesting deformalities which remains largely intact as the chamber of art and curiosities at Ubgh's Castle in Austria The Kunkam was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world and a memorory theater enskmer conveyys symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor microscopic reproduction of Charles I F of England's collection Peter Thomas states succinctly The Kunstkabinetet itself was a form of propaganda two of the most famously described seventeenth century cabinets were those of Ola Vermm known as Olaus Vermius and Athanacius Kirker The seventeenth century cabinets were filled with preserved animals Horns tasks. Skeletons minerals as well as other interesting man made objects Nictureures wondrously old One Grizzly fine or wondrously small Qur Gatama ethnographic specimens from exotic locations Often they would contain a mix of fact and fiction including apparently mythical creatures. Verm's collection contained, for example, what he thought was a Scythian lamb a woolly fern thought to be a plant sheep fabulous creature However, he was also responsible for identifying the Narwell's tusk as coming from a whale rather than a unicorn as most owners of these believe 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 catalogue of Vermms's collollection published as the Museum for Miianem. sixteen fifty five Use the collection of artifacts as a starting point for Vermm speculations on philosophy, science natural history and more. Cabinets of curiosities were limited to those who could afford to create and maintain them Many monarchs, in particular, developed large collections A rather underused example stronger in art than other areas. was the stududiolo of Francesco I F. the first Medici grand Duke of Tuscany Frederick III of Denmark, who added Vermm's collection to his own after Vermm's death wasas another such monarch A third example is the Kunzkamera founded by Peter the Great. in St. Petersburg in seventeen fourteen Many items were bought in Amsterdam from Alberta Seba. and Frederick Royce the fabulous Hudsburg Imperial collollection included important Aztec artifacts. including the feather headdress or crown of Montezuma, now in the Museum of Ethhnology, Vienna Similar collections on a smaller scale were the complex Kunstter Schrena produced in the early seventeenth century. by the Augsburg merchant diplomat and collector toap you off for 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 Augsburg to King Gustavus Adolfus of Sweden in sixteen thirty two which is kept in the museum Gastavianum in Upssula The curio cabinet is a modern single piece of furniture as a version of the grander historical examples, The juxtaposition of such disparate objects accccording to Horst Brredterkamp's analysis encouraged comparisons. findinding analogies and parallels and favored the cultural change from a worldview aesthetic to a dynamic view of endlessly transforming natural history and a historical perspective that led in the seventeenth century to the germs of a scientific view of reality. in seventeenth century parlons Both French and English A cabinet came to signify a collection of works of art which might still also include an assembly of objects of virtue or curiosities such as a virtuoso would find intellectually stimulating In seventeen fourteen, Michael Bernhard Valentini published an early mususeiological work Museum, museorum an account of the cabinets known to him with catalogs of their contents In the second half of the eighteenth century Bel Cazar Hacked Operated in Lu Bliana than the capital of Cardniola a natural history cabinet that was appreciated throughout Europe and was visited by the highest nobility. including the Holy Roman emmperor Joseph II The Russian Grand Duke Paul and Pope Pius VI as well as by famous naturalists such as Francesco Grizolini and Franz Benedict Hermmann It included a number of minerals, including specimens of mercury from the adriamine A herbarium vivum with over four thousand specimens of carneiolin and form plans small number of animal specimens a natural history and medical library and an anatomical theater A laid example of the juxtaposition of natural materials with richly worked artifificice is provided by the green vaults fored by Augustus the Strong in Dresden to display his chamber of wonders The Enlightenment Gallery and the British Museum inststalled in the former Kingss Library room in two thousand three to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the museum aims to recreate the abundance and diversity that still characterizeed museums in the mid eighteenth century mixing shes samples and botanical specimens was a great variety of artwork and other man made objects from all over the world Some strands of the early universal collections The bizarre of freakish biological specimens whether they' genuine or fake and the more exotic historical objects could find a home in commercial, freak shows and side shows In sixteen seventy one, when visiting Thomas Brown The courtier John Evelyn remarked His whole house and garden is a paradise and cabinet of rarities. and that of the best collection ammongst metals, books plans. Natural things. late in his life. Brown parodied the rising trend of collecting curiosities in his tract museum Clausum an inventory of dubious, rumored and non existent books, pictures and objects Sir Hans Sloan, an English physician member of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians, and the founder of the British Museum in London begins sporadically collecting plants in England and France while studying medicine In sixteen eighty seven, the Duke of Albemarl offered Sloan a position as personal physician to the West Indies fleet at Jamaica. He accepted and spent fifteen months collecting and cataloging the native plants, animals and artificial curiosities of Jamaica became the basis for his two volume work Natural history of Jamaica published in seventeen oh seven and seventeen twenty five Sloan returned to England in sixteen eighty nine with over eight hundred specimens of plants which were live or mounted on heavy paper and an eight volume Abarium He also attempted to bring back live animals. AG snakes, an alligator and an iguana But they all died before Regin England Sloan meticulously cataloged and created extensive records for most of the specimens and objects in his collection They also began to acquire other collections by gift or purchase. Hermman Borhev gave him four volumes of plants from Borhev's garden at Leidden. William Charlton in a Bequest in seventeen oh two Gave slan numerous books of Birds is. flowers and shells and his miscellaneous Museum consisting of curiosities miniatures insects Medals Animals Minerals Pcious stones and curiosities in Amber. Cone purchased Leonard Blukenet's collection in seventeen ten It consisted of twenty three volumes with over eight thousand plans from Africa, India, Japan and China Mary Somerset, Duchess of Bauford left in a twelve volume herbarium from her gardens at Chelsea and Badman. upon her death in seventeen fourteen Reverend Adam Buttle gave Sloan thirteen volumes of British plants In seventeen sixteen, Sloan purchased Enggelberg Kemfer's volume of Japanese plants and James Pettiver's virtual Museum of approximately one hundred volumes of plants from Europe North America, Africa the near East. India and the Orient. Kates By gave him plans from North America and the West Indies from an expedition funded by Sloan Philip Miller gave him twelve volumes of plants grown from the Chelsea Physics Garden Slone acquired approximately three hundred and fifty artificial curiosities from North American Indians. Hey would South America Lond Siberia. East Indies and the West Indies including nine items from Jamaica these ethnological artifacts were important because they established a field of collection for the British Museum that was to increase greatly with the explorations of Captain James Cook in Oceana and Australia and the rapid expansion of the British Empire Upon his death in seventeen fifty three, Sloan bequeathed his sizable collection of three hundred and thirty seven volumes to England. for twenty thousand pounds In seventeen fifty nine, George II's Royal Library. was added to Sloan's collection to form the foundation of the British Museum. John Traduskin the Elder was a gardener, naturalist and botanist in the employ of the Duke of Buckingham. He collected plants, bulbs, flowers vines Berries and fruit trees from Russia to Levand Algers France, Bermuda the Caribbean and the East Indies His son, John Traduskin, the younger Traveled to Virginia in sixteen thirty seven and collected flowers, plants, shells an Indian deer skin mantle believed to have belonged to Pauhaden, father of Pocaondas. Father and son, in addition to botanical specimens It's logical Iji Voto from Maratius. the upper jaw of a walrus and armadills artificial curiosities. EG Wampum belelts portraits Lays turned ivory Weapons, costumes Oriental footwear. and carved alabibaster panels and rarities HeG a mermaid's hand. A dragon's egg two feathers of a phoenix's tail peace of the true cross and a vial of blood that reigned in the Isle of White By the sixteen thirties, the Traduscans displayed their eclectic collection at their residence in South Lambeth Traduscan's arc, as it came to be known. was the earliest major cabinet of curiosity in England and open to the public for a small entrance fee Elias Ashmole was a lawyer, chemist, and agquarian. Freemason and a member of the Royal Society with a keen interest in astrology, alchemy, And Bodney Ashmul was also a neighbor of the Tradiscans in Lambeth He financed the publication of museum Tardiscantianum catalogue of the Arc collllection in sixteen fifty six Ashmool, a collector in his own ride acquired the Traduscan Ark in sixteen fifty nine. and ededited to his collection of astrological, medical and historical manuscripts In sixteen seventy five, he donated his library and collection and the Tradaskin collection. to the University of Oxford provided that a suitable building be provided to house a collection Ashmoull's donation formed the foundation of the Ashmoan Museum at Oxford Paces of exhibition of and places of new societies that promoted natural knowledge also seem to culture the idea of perfect civility Some scholars proposeed that this was a reaction against the dogmatism and enthusiasm of the English Civil War. and interreum This move to politeness put bars on how one should behave and interact socially which enabled the distinguishing of the polite from the supposed common or more vulgar members of society Ehibitions of curiosities, as they were typically od in forum marvels attracted a wide more general audience. which rendered them more suitable subjects of polite discourse at the society A subject was considered less suitable for polite discourse If the curiosity being displayed was accompanied by too much other material evidence as it allowed for less conjecture and exploration of ideas regarding the displayed curiosity Because of this, many displays simply included a concise description of the phenomena and avoided any mention of explanation for the phenomena. Quenton Skinner describes the early Royal Society as something much more like a gentleman's club an idea supported by John Evelyn. The Royal Society is an assembly of many honorable gentlemen who meet inoffensively together under His Majesty's royal cognizance. and to entertain themselves ingeniously Whilst there other domestic aocations or public business deprives them of being always in the company of learned men and that they cannot dwell forever in the universities Cabinets of curiosities can now be found at Snow's Hill Manor. And Wellington Hall And the Ashmoian Museum has a display of items from its disparate Ashmool and Tratuscan founding collections. By the early decades of the eighteenth century Curiosities and wondrous specimens had begun to lose their influence among European natural philosophers As enlightenment thinkers placed growing emphasis on patterns and systems within nature Anomalies and rarities came to be regarded as potentially misleading objects of study Curiosities, previously interpreted as divine messages and expressions of nature's variety We're increasingly seen as vulgar expressions to nature's overall uniformity The Houston Museum of Natural Science houses a hands on cabinet of cururiosities compleplete with taxidermid crocodile embedded in the ceiling Alla Fnd Ebperatos Dell story and Naturali In Los Angeles, the modern day Museum of Jurassic Technology An Achronistically seeks to recreate the sense of woondnder that the old cabinets of curiosity once aroused in Spring Green, Wisconsin The house and museum of Alex Jordan. known as the House on the Rock can also be interpreted as a modern day curiosity cabinet. especially in the collection and display of automatons In Bristol, Rhode Island, Muse Potamekanic is presented as a hybrid between an automaton theater and a cabinet of curiosities and contains works representing the field of patteromechanics. aristic practice and area of study. chiefly inspired by padaphysics. The idea of a cabinet of curiosities has also appeared in recent publications and performances. For example, Cabinet magazine is a quarterly magazine that juxtaposes apparently unrelated cultural artifacts and phenomena to show their interconnectedness in ways that encourage curiosity about the world The Italian Cultural Association, Vunerkomn. uses the theme of historical cabinets of curiosities to explore how amazement is manifested within today's artistic discourse in may two thousand eight. the University of Leeds Fine Art BA program hosted a show called under Commer culmination of research and practice from students which allowed viewers to encounter work from across all disciplines ranging from intimate installation to thought provoking video and highly skilled drawing. punctuated by live performances The concept has been reinterpreted at the Victor Wy Museum of Curiosities. fine art and national history. In july twenty twenty one A new cabinet of Curiosity' room was opened at the Whittaker Museum and Art Gallery and Rot andstall Lancashire curated by artist Bob Frith founder of Horse and Bamboo Theatater. Several internet bloggers describeed their sites as Vundercamon. either because they are primarily links to interesting things. or inspire wonders similarly to the original Vunar common Researcher Robert Gell describes such internet video sites as YouTube as mododern day Vunder Kamn Although in danger of being refined into capitalist institutions just as professionalized curators or finded Vuner Cers into the modern museum. in the eighteenth century