Cabinet Of Curiosities Research Articles

Oceanic Curating

Oceans have proliferated in artworks and exhibitions in recent years, coinciding with a surge of scholarship in the blue humanities and critical ocean studies. However, despite the extensive art history of the sea, artistic and curatorial knowledge has been relatively underrepresented within marine explorations in the environmental humanities. Meanwhile, an abundance of curatorial projects that take the sea as a subject forms a rich repository of innovative thought and practice, pioneering in both oceanic content and methods. This article examines the various curatorial strategies deployed and critiqued in recent exhibitions, drawing on the authors’ long-term research project Curating the Sea, which has involved both primary art historical research and collaborations with curators of art and natural history as well as contemporary artists. Here the authors chart a shift from the display of contemporary marine-themed “cabinets of curiosity” toward more localized and politicized curatorial responses, from awe in the face of the aquatic sublime toward commitment to interdisciplinary and multispecies collaboration. They argue for curatorial practice’s unique capacity to respond to the plurality of oceans and their communities, histories, geographies, and ecologies, demonstrating that such activity does not merely reflect but itself constitutes recent oceanic cultural and theoretical currents.

DARKNESS MATTERS

Darkness Matters displays historic lightscapes, specifically at night, from petroglyphs to James Webb Telescope images. The exposition constructs a sort of cabinet of curiosities and wants to take the visitor on a private journey to a virtual exhibition space to re-embrace the endeavors under and around the nocturnal vault, an underrepresented micro-story of our times. By researching archive material, image recordings and other available data Costanza Julia Bani creates speculative reconstructions of our nights and our relationship to the universe behind the sky we can see with our naked eye. Starting from fireflies in olive groves, alpine forests and the Milky Way, the exposition becomes a visual experience around darknesses and light pollution that has been transforming our nocturnal habitat since the introduction of artificial light.

Studying and Collecting Coins of the Golden Horde in the Russian Empire in the Late 17th – Early 19th Centuries

Introduction. The purpose of the article is to find out the state of Jochi numismatics in the Russian Empire by the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. The novelty of the research. For the first time in one work, the currently known information about the origin of the study of the coins of the Golden Horde in the 18th century is presented. The beginning of systematic coin collecting in Russia was laid by Peter I, who himself was one of the first Russian collectors and collected coins, including “Tatar” (i.e. Golden Horde) coins in his collection. Methods and materials. Numismatics is based on information from a number of human sciences: paleography, chronology, etc. Numismatics is characterized by a complex study of coins and attention to their role in historical processes. The materials for writing the article were mainly publications of the late 17th century – early 19th century, containing information about the coins of the Golden Horde. Analysis. In 1714, the Cabinet of Curiosities – the Kunstkamera – was founded in St. Petersburg. Before the emergence of the Hermitage, it was the Kunstkamera, which had its own Mintskabinet, that was the main numismatic treasury of Russia; coins from its collection later entered the Hermitage. There is evidence that Golden Horde coins were also stored in the Kunstkamera of the 18th century. The origin of private coin collecting in Russia, including Juchid coins (collections of Y.V. Bruce, A.P. Volynsky, P.I. Musin-Pushkin, etc.), belongs to the first half of the 18th century. Readings of inscriptions on coins (and, accordingly, definitions) were often erroneous. Rather, the exception is the activity of the orientalist Georg Jacob Kehr (1692–1740), who was in many ways ahead of the level of science of his time and who, judging by the surviving prints, made many correct definitions. Results. There was no systematic fixation of coin finds in the 18th century; only fragmentary information about the places of coin finds (Bolgar and Selitrennoe settlements, etc.) was preserved. At the same time, the base created in the 18th century (the development of private coin collecting, the Mintskabinet in the Kunstkamera, the activities of G.J. Kehr, etc.) contributed to bringing research to a qualitatively new level in the first half of the 19th century.

Of Goavddis and Runic calendars

Sámi artefacts are today exhibited in numerous European museums. Since the Renaissance, members of the educated elites were fascinated by the North and acquired Sámi items for their private cabinets of curiosities. Over the centuries most of these collections were dispersed. In a few cases though, some of the items once in these modern collections re-emerged from the past, to be displayed in contemporary museums. This is the case for a few Sámi artefacts currently part of Italian and Vatican collections: a goavddis and a Sámi runic calendar. The paper retraces the stories and histories of these objects, addressing colonial practices and ideologies connected with the acquisition of Indigenous artefacts in Modern Europe. In doing so, this contribution highlights how the presence of these coveted commodities in early museums bore witness to entangled colonial histories.

A Cabinet of Curiosities: The Apostles Cabinet in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

The Apostles cabinet 1 is one of the most recognisable objects that Charlotte Brontë encountered in life and subsequently represented in fiction. Two years before the publication of Jane Eyre (1847), Brontë had visited Hathersage in Derbyshire and had seen the Apostles cabinet in situ; the object clearly remained embedded in her memory. Although the Brontë Parsonage Museum purchased the Apostles cabinet in 1935, no one has yet identified the individual apostles depicted on it, or deeply considered the cabinet’s imaginative recreation in Brontë’s novel. This article will present previously unknown information about the Apostles cabinet, including the fact that eleven of the cabinet’s twelve portraits are modelled on engravings by Cornelis van Caukercken produced circa 1650–1660, which in turn were based on a series of paintings by Anthony Van Dyck created circa 1615–1620. Understanding the cabinet as a material object will enable an investigation of several curious aspects of Brontë’s imaginative transformation of it. I will argue that the fictional cabinet in Jane Eyre serves multiple literary purposes: to enhance the Gothic setting; to contribute to Brontë’s subtle characterisation of Mr Rochester as Catholic; and to evoke the themes of redemption, healing, sin, and betrayal that pervade the novel. 2

AN INVESTIGATION OF TOURISTS SATISFACTION IN MAAYSIA CULTURAL MUSEUM: ENTRANCE SPACE EXPERIENCE

Malaysia is known with its rich and diverse cultural heritage. Therefore, a number of cultural museums which display Malaysia’s multifarious history, traditions, and art forms has established. However, there is a decreasing trend of visitor visiting the cultural museum in Malaysia. This trend is highly influenced by the tourists’ experience gained during their visit to the museum. This study aims to study the tourist satisfaction in the entrance space of Malaysia cultural museum. This study analyses the data gathered from 381 respondents through a questionnaire survey. The statement in the survey represents different elements which are education, escape, aesthetic, and entertainment. The findings show that the aesthetic element is the most appreciated element by the respondents during the visit while escape element is the least appreciated element. Most of the respondents are in the younger group age, which is an age group that appreciates aesthetics the most while almost a third of the respondents went to the museum due to work, hence make the element of escape the least appreciated. From history, museum institutions have been evolving throughout the time as it is only known as a place called “Cabinets of Curiosities” in 1500s. The existing museum can start integrating itself with other attractions or providing more activities for the visitor to turn it into a more interesting and fun place for the visitor.

Curiosities in the Far North

Abstract According to conventional accounts of Norwegian museum history, Norway’s history of collecting began in the second half of the eighteenth century. However, this article, which is the first comprehensive investigation into Norway’s involvement with seventeenth-century collecting cultures, shows that the country’s museum and collecting history began more than a hundred years earlier. It addresses the question of infrastructure: namely, how Norway and Norwegians came into contact with Danish and other continental collectors and collections. While some networks engaged explicitly in the exchange of rarities, others were primarily administrative, diplomatic or mercantile in character, allowing curiosities – and also curiosity – to travel. The article seeks to portray a museal culture of seeing, finding, transmuting, collecting, communicating, distributing and publishing specimens and artefacts. It demonstrates how well integrated Norwegians and Norway were in the culture of Kunstkammern and cabinets of curiosities, and it concludes that Norway has been profoundly overlooked in the history of early modern collecting.

Women, Empire, and Entomology: An Object Biography of Eleanor Glanville’s Pipevine Swallowtail, c. 1700

Today, the gentlewoman Eleanor Glanville (1655–1709) is often remembered as the first lady of British butterflies. In Glanville’s own lifetime, she gained a reputation amongst London naturalists as an astute collector of butterflies from the South West region of England. Yet, a turn towards Glanville’s material archive, namely, her extant specimens held at the Natural History Museum, London, reveals Glanville’s success as a collector of rare butterflies from the Americas and thus, her complicity in colonial collecting. This article provides an object biography of a single pipevine swallowtail or Battus philenor, c. 1700, labeled “Glandvill.” It follows the butterfly specimen from its obscure origins in the Americas, to Glanville’s residence in the Atlantic port city of Bristol, and to London naturalists’ cabinets of curiosities, where it would became part of a collection that helped found the British Museum, the first public museum of its kind. The life cycle of this object attests to the role that empire played in building one woman’s collection of insects and her contributions to the making of present-day museums. It also suggests that while empire opened up opportunities for some women naturalists, it did not necessarily advance their reputations as collectors.

Coffeehouse Curiosities: Materiality and Musealization Strategies in The Athenian Mercury

AbstractBased on the epistolary interaction with readers, John Dunton's Athenian Mercury (1691–97) provided a platform for the discussion and dissemination of knowledge drawn from diverse fields. Plagued by doubts about its reliability, the periodical constantly had to (re‐)assert its credibility. One of the strategies the Mercury employed was to emphasize the physicality of objects via text, practising a performance of materiality. Taking the letter‐as‐object as its starting point, this article argues that materiality played a crucial role in not only the representation but also the active production of truthfulness. Examining how Dunton's periodical leveraged notions of the coffeehouse as an exhibition space, this article explores how the Mercury drew on musealization strategies to represent material objects to underline their existence and its own credibility. Interpellating readers as virtuosi, the Athenian Society staged the coffeehouse and even itself as a walk‐in curiosity cabinet, turning letters into matter and fiction into fact.

A Cabinet of Religious Curiosities

En 1723, les premiers volumes de la série en sept livres, Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-1737), sont publiés à Amsterdam par le Huguenot exilé Jean Frédéric Bernard. Somptueusement illustrée de plus de 250 gravures par le célèbre graveur parisien, également exilé, Bernard Picart, la série Cérémonies offre une perspective révolutionnaire sur les religions du monde en comparant à parts égales cérémonies, coutumes et rituels. Des recherches antérieures ont montré que le corpus d’illustrations de Picart doit être considéré comme une « source et cible de l’agentivité sociale », pour le dire avec les mots de Gell. En conséquence, les illustrations imprimées de Picart peuvent être vues comme des outils pour susciter des émotions et exiger l’intervention active du spectateur par le biais de diverses stratégies visuelles. Dans cet article, je souhaite approfondir notre compréhension des moyens par lesquels les représentations des cérémonies religieuses de Picart ont agi comme une force de changement en examinant les différentes manières dont il a cherché à atteindre son objectif. En plus des travaux universitaires antérieurs qui ont mis en avant l’utilisation par Picart de la méthode comparative (Hunt et al., 2010), de la « con‑visualisation » des images (Von Wyss-Giacosa, 2019) et de la « dés‑orientation du soi » (Tarantino, 2021), je suggère que sa stratégie artistique doit également beaucoup à l’utilisation de la théâtralité comme dispositif rhétorique visuel et performatif pour diffuser le savoir.

Network analysis of the herbarium collection of the Moravian Church from the 18th century

The Herbarium Dresdense (DR), Germany, houses about 500 000 specimens of worldwide origin. One of the oldest collections is the Herbarium Barbiense of the Moravian Church from the mid to the late 18th century. On their mission to spread Christianity, the Moravians settled on many continents and took the advantage of exploring culture and nature of their new home countries. Being excellent observers and documentarists, they left a barely explored corpus of objects and texts of tremendous importance for natural sciences and humanities. Since 1754 the educational centre of the community was located in Barby, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. To support the scientific training and to gather objects send home by the missionaries, a cabinet of natural curiosities was established in 1756. The collections of minerals, fossils, conchylia and plants were unique and soon attracted other European academics.

Formal Relationship between Cabinets of Curiosities and Museum of Innocence

Amaç: Bu metin, geleneksel bir sergileme yöntemi olarak nadire kabineleri ile Orhan Pamuk’un aynı isimli romanından hareketle kurduğu Masumiyet Müzesi arasındaki biçimsel ve kavramsal ilişkiyi incelemeyi amaçlamaktadır. Çok çeşitli eşyaların bir araya getirildiği odalar, dolaplar ya da çekmecelerden oluşan Nadire Kabineleri aynı zamanda çağımızın sanat anlayışında da etkilerini sürdürmekte ve eserlerin sergileniş biçiminde önemli bir referans olmaktadır. Bu sergileme yöntemi Jan van Kessel’in resimlerinde ve Georges Perec’in Harikalar Odası romanında da karşımıza çıkmakta, üç boyutlu kabinelerin iki boyutlu tuval yüzeyine yansımaları ele alınmaktadır. Burada gelenekselden çağdaşa gerçekleşen biçimsel aktarım, kabineler ve Masumiyet Müzesi örnekleri üzerinden anlatılmaktadır. Kavramsal/Kuramsal Çerçeve: Coğrafi keşifler ve Rönesans’la birlikte nadire kabinelerinin çıkış süreci incelenmiş, bu sergileme yönteminin Masumiyet Müzesi ile arasındaki benzerliklere dikkat çekilmiştir. Sergileme ve kurgudaki bu biçimsel benzerlik resimdeki örnekler üzerinden incelenmiştir. Yöntem: Bu disiplinler arası metinde, öncelikle literatür taraması yapılmış, elde edilen bulgular analiz edilerek karşılaştırma yapılmıştır. Bulgular: Nadire kabinleri 14. yüzyıl ile birlikte ortaya çıkan özel koleksiyonlardır. Bu, kişinin ilgi duyduğu nesneleri bir araya getirdiği odaların vitrinlerin dolapların ve çekmecelerin tümüne verilen isimdir. Kabinelerin resimdeki karşılığı ise harikalar odasıdır. Mevcut koleksiyon, iki boyutlu yüzeye kopyalanarak yeniden oluşturulur. Masumiyet müzesi de tıpkı Nadire Kabinleri ve Harikalar Odası gibi kurgulanmış biçimsel olarak çeşitli dolaplardan ve odalardan oluşmasıyla birlikte benzer bir sergileme yöntemine sahiptir. Sonuç: Nadire Kabinelerinin bugünkü modern müzelerin, doğa tarihi müzelerinin, antropoloji ve arkeoloji müzelerinin temelini oluşturmaktadır. Koleksiyonculuk kavramının ilk örnekleridir. Harikalar Odası olarak adlandırılan resim türü ise; mevcut koleksiyonun resim yoluyla yeniden üretilmesi mantığına dayanır. Bu bağlamda kabineler, Masumiyet Müzesi ile birlikle biçimsel bir ilişki kurmaktadır. Bir anlatım yöntemi olarak kutular, dolaplar ve odalar kişinin ilgi alanlarının hayal dünyasının ve meraklılarının bir yansımasıdır. Ancak nadireler ve ilgili müze arasında bazı farklar bulunmaktadır. Nadire Kabinelerinde yer alan nesneler kişiliği olan, farklı ve ender bulunan şeylerken Masumiyet Müzesi’nde yer alan nesneler günlük hayatta karşılaşabileceğimiz sıradan nesnelerdir. Ayrıca Nadire Kabinelerinin sergileme yöntemi, Dada ve Fluxus’ta da biçimsel olarak göstermekte ve bu yanıyla çağdaş sanat ve müzecilik anlayışına temel oluşturmaktadır.

Trans Visual Narratives: Representing Gender and Nature in Early Modern Europe

Abstract: This article studies the portraits of two gender-ambiguous individuals, the seventeenth-century Spanish soldier Antonio (née Catalina) de Erauso and the eighteenth-century French diplomat the Chevalier (Chevalière) d’Eon, as they offer a window into early modern debates on the representation of nature through its wonders. Making sense of the representations of Erauso and d’Eon requires viewing them as depictions of nature that belonged to the genre of the cabinet of curiosities. When seen as part of the cabinet of curiosities, their paintings appear as part of the artistic and scientific explorations that negotiated changing concepts of nature in early modern Europe. While Erauso’s portrait belonged to a tradition that embraced the sitter’s gender ambiguities, d’Eon’s portrait appears instead as a transitional object between two ways of organizing knowledge of nature. D’Eon’s portrait reflected a grown interest in the eighteenth century of representing nature in an objective way with a clear separation between the genders.

Facing Depletion. Artworks for an Epistemological Shift in the Collapse Era

This article first reports a victory of technosolutionism over the other alternatives to the ongoing collapse (species extinction, ecosystems depletion...). The victory is considered double: extraction can continue to increase (quantity and scope) and the devices made by technoscience are accepted as a solution to the problems caused by intensive exploitation (which they also require). Exploitation is extended, following Achille Mbembé's proposal, to humans, non-human animals, and the earth (in a geological sense), retaining the terms fracturing, extraction, depletion. Four works are analyzed as epistemological shifts to technosolutionism. David Claerbout's The Pure Necessity (2016) is an animated cartoon of animals with a streamlined behavior depicted with the graphic style of Disney. The complex interlocking of eras, styles, behaviors (human and non-human) is envi-saged as resistance to fracking and exploitation. Animal Cinema (2017) by Emilio Vavarella is a short film made from rushes produced by non-human animals. It is emphasized that the frugal production method opposes the spectacular logics of big-budget animal reporting. It adopts the animal point of view while respecting their means of production. It is also seductive by a fluid and hypnotizing editing more easily accessible to humans. Emilio Vavarella's Amazon's Cabinet of Curiosity (2019) is an installation with a strict protocol: the artist asks what he should order to make an artistic production. He then buys each suggestion until his budget is exhausted. By its absence, the commercial behavior of the so-called intelligent device is underlined. The artist also resists fracturing and exploitation by reducing himself to a demand. Finally, She Was Called Petra (2020) by myself is a multi-media installation. In this one, language is re-interrogated and a zone of contact/exchange is set up to cohabit with and think a hybrid presence.

Making sense together. The cabinet of curiosity as path to reconsider education for all

ABSTRACT This paper refers to a project that we as an art school carried out together with the Flemish organisation VVOB in Zambia. The main goal of the project was to equip primary school teachers with the necessary knowledge and infrastructure to deliver basic ‘education for all.’ The paper challenges the implicit instrumentalization of the arts in that approach, but also brings back to the forefront the notion of art as a practice that ‘makes sense together.’ Through cabinet of curiosity practices such as observing, noting, collecting, mapping, exposing and gathering, we explored how sharing emergent relational structures could be a starting point and even the essence of a pedagogical practice that thinks with and before the world, and approaches education for all as a study praxis rather than an end goal. The argument is built in company with authors such as Gert Biesta, Jean Luc Nancy and Tim Ingold.

Review: New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Mark Thurner and Juan Pimentel

Review: <i>New World Objects of Knowledge: A Cabinet of Curiosities</i>, edited by Mark Thurner and Juan Pimentel

More-than-Human Wellbeing

More-than-Human Wellbeing

Chad's cabinet of icy curiosities: Sharpening the interpretation of subglacial and ice marginal environments during the LPIA glaciation of the Ennedi Plateau

The Ennedi Plateau in Chad in north-central Africa exposes an outstanding example of a palaeo-ice stream glacial landsystem of late Palaeozoic age, with an assemblage of geomorphological structures of comparable preservation quality to those found in Quaternary deglaciated landscapes. Satellite images and various methods to combine acquired satellite data (e.g. band-ratio technique) have been used to interpret proglacial, ice-marginal and subglacial structures. The main goal of the study is to produce a detailed and more in-depth analysis of newly found structures that enhance our understanding of ice sheet behaviour in the Ennedi Plateau during the LPIA.We report the first known evidence of soft-sediment striated surfaces from outcrop, testifying to the existence of a soft-deformable bed. This deformable bed interpretation can probably be upscaled to explain the extensive swarms of mega-scale glacial lineations mapped previously across the plateau. Furthermore, we identify the first known fully preserved grounding zone wedge (GZW), replete with three-dimensional geometry, in the rock record. This unique structure exhibits a well pronounced slope and a convex topography. Its presence allows the position of the former coastline to be reconstructed as it is assumed that ice streams terminated into a former ocean basin. Building on the studies by Le Heron (2018) and Kettler et al. (this issue), our analyses permit unprecedented insights into the behaviour of a significant, mid-latitude, marine-terminating ice sheet during the LPIA.

Wunderkammern e divulgazione per l’infanzia: conoscere e immaginare attraverso la meraviglia

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Wunderkammern represent a truly interesting phenomenon not only because of their pe- culiar feature of collecting amazing, even monstrous, items from all over the planet, but especially for the importance given to feelings such as curiosity, wonder and astonish- ment in the process of discovering the world, as a medium to get to knowledge. Wunder- kammern, also known as Cabinets of Curiosities, keep being represented in art and enter- tainment, with particular relevance to their most grotesque aspects; here, the focus is on two depictions coming from non-fiction children’s literature, which has gone through a recent wave of innovation regarding specifically the picturebooks form. The non-fiction picturebooks edited in the last decade appear to have in common a significant illustration and design apparatus, resulting in a strongly creative and aesthetic approach to knowledge: engaging the senses – and therefore inspiring awe and wonder – together with data and information, these non-fiction picturebooks contribute to restore value to art and beauty in the learning process, revealing a sort of relationship with the Wunderkammer paradigm.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

Introduction

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; This monographic section of volume 25 of Itinera stems largely from the discussions that took place during the two study days I organised on 13th and 14th. May 2021 at the Stensen Institute in Florence, entitled Ricerche in corso. These were planned on the occasion of the Moral Philosophy Seminars, held at the University of Florence, with the collaboration of Professor Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis and Professor Bruno Accarino, who were foundamental importance for these event, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them.&#x0D; With the aim of continuing and enriching the debate of both days, this section not only brings together some of the contributions presented by the speakers, but it also aims to further involve other authors in the field of teratology, an area of study, which can seem somewhat impenetrable.The original title of the seminar “The Anatomical Monster” (the subtitle of which reads: “Figures of Irregularity, Mechanisms of Exclusion and Biological Naturalism”) evidently referred to the theme of so-called “monstrous births”.&#x0D; The attempt was to make evident certain themes that run through the various contributions; starting from the definition of abnormal and pathological as deviations from the norm, we move on to delineate the field of unforeseen variations - anomalies, alterations, and abnormalities. We continue to the visual representation of monstrosity, its aesthetic form and its capacity to reveal exaggerated figures that break the monotony of “normality” by virtue of unexpected juxtapositions. This includes the monsters that populated Cabinets of Curiosities as much as circuses, later housed in the collections and on the anatomical tables of 18th- and 19th-century naturalists; the analysis of the present perception of the monster, aimed at its ambiguity, considered as a union of contrasting features that stand out against a horizon that leads back to otherness and difference. The result is a varied and polymorphous collection, within which the investigation of the prodigious, the marvellous and the monstrous loom transversally from every single essay.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;