Nouvelles Curiosites/New Curiosities

Abstract

Nouvelles Curiosités/New Curiosities . Digne-Les-Bains, Musée Gassendi, 2003. ISBN 291–245004–7. 133 pp., 48 col. illus. €30. I have not been to the Musée Gassendi in Digne, but to judge by this sprightly little catalogue-cum-collection-of-essays, it is rather an interesting place. An idea of the French Revolution, turned local encyclopaedic museum in the mid-nineteenth century, the Musée Gassendi – named after the eponymous seventeenth-century antiquarian – became an arts museum in the twentieth century. But what makes it exceptional is that its large scientific collections of obscurities and curiosities remained in aspic, neglected, packed away but not destroyed. Re-invented again in the 1990s as a museum in and of its environment, with a large collection of works by Andy Goldsworthy (for instance) and its curiosities returned to display, the place sounds fascinating. The essays collected here – by artists like Joan Fontcuberta and herman de vries, the critic Fabien Faure and...