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Artists-as-Curators in Museums: Observations on Contemporary Wunderkammern

L’artiste-commissaire au musée : observations sur les Wunderkammern contemporains

Areti Adamopoulou* & Esther Solomon**

* Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Fine Arts and of the Sciences of Art, University of
Ioannina, 45110, Ioannina, Greece

** Assistant Professor of Museum Studies, Department of Fine Arts and of the Sciences of Art,
University of Ioannina, 45110, Ioannina, Greece

* Professeure agrégée d’histoire de l’art, Département des beaux-arts et des sciences de l’art,
Université de Ioannina, 45110, Ioannina, Grèce

** Professeure adjointe de muséologie, Département des beaux-arts et des sciences de l’art,


Université de Ioannina, 45110, Ioannina, Grèce

Received: October 14, 2015 Accepted: February 18, 2016 Online: June 17, 2016
Reçu : 14 octobre 2015 Accepté : 18 février 2016 En ligne : 17 juin 2016

To cite this article (original version)


Adamopoulou, Areti and Esther Solomon. 2016. Artists-as-Curators in Museums: Observations on
Contemporary Wunderkammern. THEMA. La revue des Musées de la civilisation 4:35-49.

Pour citer cet article (version française)


Adamopoulou, Areti et Esther Solomon. 2016. L’artiste-commissaire au musée : observations sur les
Wunderkammern contemporains. THEMA. La revue des Musées de la civilisation 4:50-65.

Tous droits réservés / All rights reserved


© THEMA. La revue des Musées de la civilisation, 2016
ISSN : 2292-6534

thema.mcq.org
ARTICLE
ARTISTS-AS-CURATORS IN MUSEUMS:
OBSERVATIONS ON CONTEMPORARY WUNDERKAMMERN

ARETI ADAMOPOULOU* & ESTHER SOLOMON**

Abstract
Since the mid-1980s, the new, socially responsive role that museums have assumed and the critically engaged positions
of  chief curators and directors have led to a variety of  practices that attempt to break the old canon of  exhibitions,
to promote new and interactive ways of  communicating their collections to the public and to achieve the much-desired
engagement with museum objects. In this framework, artists are often invited by art and other museums (historical,
archeological, ethnographic, etc.) to display or to produce their work as artists-in-residence, creating different
contexts for existing exhibitions. But what happens when contemporary artists are called to “re-organize” parts of  a
museum’s permanent collection, commenting in parallel on the institution’s own history and function? In our paper, we
discuss curatorial projects undertaken by artists that critically assess the museum’s historical role, its epistemological
background and its power to legitimize culture. Artistic installations and redisplays of  historical collections by artists
become the focus of  our inquiry, especially in the now fashionable display format of  the Renaissance Wunderkammer.
Our aim is to examine how artistic knowledge and practice can illuminate aspects of  art-historical and museological
practices, aspects which are rendered invisible when working separately in our academic fields.

Keywords : curatorship and art practices; museum’s epistemology; artists-as-curators; Wunderkammer

If we are now living in “Liquid Times” as Zygmunt Bauman proposed (2000), then what are the role and the
raison d’être of  museums? How can these powerful by-products of an outdated modernity attract new audiences,
offer new narratives using aging collections and respond to current sensitivities? How do they manage to
survive as they try to come to terms with current institutional criticism of  their authority and social utility?

In this paper we discuss one such “survival strategy,” namely the curatorial projects undertaken by
artists that critically assess the museum’s historical role, its epistemological background and its power to
legitimize culture. Our thoughts stemmed from museums’ and artists’ apparent fascination with a rather
unexpected historicism, which is characterized by several contemporary artworks presented, in particular
in museums that are not directly devoted to art. Artistic installations and new exhibitions of  historical
collections put on by artists become the focus of  our inquiry, especially in the now fashionable display
format of  the Renaissance Wunderkammer.1

* Associate Professor of  Art History, Department of  Fine Arts and of  the Sciences of  Art, University of  Ioannina, 45110, Ioannina,
Greece. adam.areti@gmail.com
** Assistant Professor of  Museum Studies, Department of  Fine Arts and of  the Sciences of  Art, University of  Ioannina, 45110, Ioannina,
Greece. estersol@hotmail.com

Received: October 14, 2015 Accepted: February 18, 2016 Online: June 17, 2016

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THE RETURN (?) OF AN OLD CANON


Artists have always cared about the display of  their
art. Within the context of  modernity, the art
exhibition was raised to unprecedented levels
of  importance for the artist and the art work. A
late arrival in the world of  art, the curator as an
autonomous auteur assumed a creative role equal to
that of  the artist. What would now distinguish the
artist from the curator? In the 1960s and 1970s, the
“institutional critique” wave challenged the recently
formed “art world.” Stereotypes were questioned,
ways of  thinking challenged and roles exchanged.
Many artists chose to present their critique by
employing the same tools curators used. Some artists
preferred to emphasize the procedure of  selecting the
objects to be displayed and the exhibition narrative,
and they sought to question the limits of  both the
art object and its institutions. Marcel Duchamp is
considered the patriarch of  this genre, as he “turned
the act of  choosing into a new paradigm of  creativity”
(Filipovic 2014:159-160). Other artists adopted the
curatorial procedure and used objects which already
Figure 1. Mark Dion, Tate Thames Dig, 1999. Wooden cabinet,
belonged to collections (not any ready-mades) to porcelain, earthenware, metal, animal bones, glass and two
question the limits of  museum display methods and maps. Variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya
Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2015.
of  curatorial practice (Putnam 2009).

The first, old-fashioned and rather taxonomic observation that an art historian would make is that there
are more examples of  artists acting as guest curators – that is, curating exhibitions occasionally – than
of  artists for whom the curatorial procedure is integral to their art practice. Mark Dion is one example
of  the latter. He is the artist par excellence working within the limits of  curatorship and artistic practice.
He simulates archeological practices, mines museum and university collections and directs his projects
as curator. His final works are presented as cabinets of  curiosities, both in form and in content. This
approach makes Dion’s work completely site-specific, a fact that renders the artist totally dependent upon
museum institutions and residency programs.

Since the 1990s, Dion has held more than a hundred museum and gallery exhibitions (Corrin, Kwon and
Bryson 1997; Dion 2001, 2003a, b; Kamps and Rugoff 2000; Klein 2003). In 1999-2000, he performed
the “Tate Thames Dig” as part of  the pre-opening program of  the Tate Modern, London (Figure 1). The
artist and numerous volunteers performed a survey along the banks of  the Thames at Bankside. The final
piece was a double-sided display cabinet which allowed visitors to see, handle and interpret the objects
“discovered” on the Thames foreshore, a staged environment that “engaged the viewer in phenomenal and
cognitive fields of  perception” (Blazwick 2001:103). In 2001, for his Cabinet of  Curiosities at the Weisman
Art Museum at the University of  Minnesota, Dion mined the university’s various collections with students
and staff to present his idea of  the “university as installation” (Sheehy 2006). Once again, it was an
ambitious project that involved numerous students as researchers and curators, vast and heterogeneous
research collections and extended documentation processes. His contribution to dOCUMENTA 13 (2012)
was created in connection to the Ottoneum2 (Figure 2). Dion was commissioned to design a permanent
new display for the Schildbach Xylotheque, a “wood library,” which is a unique object in the museum
collection. In the eighteenth century (1771-1779), Carl Schildbach collected 530 “books” made from tree
samples and arranged them encyclopedically (Figure 3). Dion’s chamber catalogues the collection, placing

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Figures 2-3. Mark Dion, Xylotheque, 2011-2012. Wood, glass, electric lighting, porcelain cabinet knobs, wood inlay, plant parts, paper, papier-mâché,
clay, wax, paint, wire, vellum, leather, plastic, ink. Commissioned and produced by dOCUMENTA (13) with the support of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery,
New York; Christian Nagel Gallery, Berlin – Cologne – Antwerp; Georg Kargl Gallery, Vienna; In Situ / Fabienne Leclerc, Paris; The Center for
Curating the Archive, Michaelis Art School, University of Cape Town, South Africa; the Visual Arts Department of the Universidad Jorge Tadeo
de Bogotá; Escuela de Artes y Oficios Santo Domingo, Bogota. Photos: Anders Sune Berg. Courtesy of the artist and Museumslandschaft Hessen
Kassel, 2015.

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Figures 4-5. Mark Dion, The Lost Museum, 2014. Installation view at The Jenks Museum of Natural History and Anthropology, Brown University,
Providence, RI, 2014-2015. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2015.

each sample in a panel related to its continent of  origin. The artist added six new “books” to the collection.
The first one was made out of  one of  Beuys “7 000 Oaks” (first planted in 1982 for dOCUMENTA 7), thus
symbolically completing the encyclopædic endeavor that began some 200 years ago. Inserted into the reverse
of  the panels are five images made of  wood, representing the five continents (Brindley 2012). For the Lost
Museum at the Jenks Museum of  Natural History and Anthropology at Brown University in 2014-2015, Dion
included the figure of  the collector in his installation. The final work was a resurrection of  a lost museum
collection in a cabinet-of-curiosities manner (Figures 4-5). The Jenks Museum was founded in 1871 by John
Whipple Potter Jenks (1819-1894), taxidermist and naturalist. After his death in 1894, the museum fell into
disarray and its collection was for the most part discarded in 1945. Dion, together with numerous other artists,
and with help from students and faculty at Brown University, recreated Jenks’ office, presented the surviving
part of  the museum’s collection and organized an installation that recreated objects now gone from the
collection (Anderson 2014; Fountain 2014). The exhibition was viewed as a “reminder of  a bygone era when a
much different kind of  institution offered a quiet, in-depth study” (Fountain 2014).

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In Dion’s projects, most museum practices are followed: collecting objects, registering them in a record,
setting a museological framework, making decisions about the objects that will be displayed, producing
designs and staging the exhibition. There is a catalogue with texts theorizing about the display and
illustrated with pictures of  the particular event that follows and wraps up the whole endeavor. As in
everyday museum practice, Dion’s projects are inevitably collective: many professionals and volunteers
collaborate on the necessary exhibition procedures, and engage in the team conversations and debates
that form part of  the final project. The museum as a modern institution thus becomes the main medium
(cf. Putnam 2009) – or a post-medium – of  his works. No matter how conceptual Dion’s projects may
be, the display format he chooses is that of  the Wunderkammer. Particularly in the Lost Museum, the
very core of  the project was to reproduce the lost feeling of  contemplation experienced in past forms
of  exhibitions, which is not cultivated in modern natural history museums.

Like many other artists engaged in museum “mining” projects, Dion is highly educated in academic
environments. He holds a BFA and an honorary doctorate from the University of  Hartford, Connecticut,
and it is debatable whether his theoretical orientation or his readings diverge significantly from those
of  art critics or other professionals at the museums where he has worked. Yet despite such academic
backgrounds, artists are still considered to have a “different” approach to curatorial issues. This is
evident in projects such as the Artist’s Choice, “an ongoing series in which a contemporary artist is asked
to create an exhibition from The Museum of  Modern Art’s [NY] vast collection” (Hoptman 2012). Even
conceptual and appropriation artists or art activists have not dissociated themselves from the modernist
conception of  the auteur as the genius producer of  masterpieces, worthy of  being collected or displayed in
museums, the traditional temples of  art.

What makes their choices more free or “different” than those made by curators? Could it be that their
education has prepared them to produce innovative, personalized and “authentic” works? That their
œuvre should have a unique “signature”? Could it be that Dion’s projects constitute an effort to discuss
or criticize the contemporary deadlock of  the artist’s existence and role in the market and society? Or
are his questions mainly about contemporary museum practices? Regardless of  these hypotheses, artists
are not scientists, therefore they are not expected to act with precision and methodological strictness.
Although their theoretical background is more solid than earlier in the twentieth century, their
knowledge remains tacit, while their practices and output differ from what is thought of  as a scientific
procedure (Elkins 2012:3-5, 39-48). According to Frances Whitehead, artists are “creative, in process
problem solving and ongoing processes, [...they] compose and perform, initiate and carry-thru, design
and execute. [...] [They] are trained to initiate, re-direct the brief, and consider their intentionality”
(Whitehead 2006). What makes their choices appealing to museums, curators, exhibition designers and
perhaps the public is exactly the arbitrary nature of  creativity, performativity and problem-solving
capacity, as well as their (perceived) special role in society. The romantic myth of  the artist as a person
who possesses special abilities, who is an extraordinarily sensitive human being and a creative genius,
still lives on. It is perhaps these and similar features that make artists appear attractive not only to
the “creative industry,” but also to research institutions, government centres, etc. However, the limits
between artists’ and curators’ choices are, of  course, blurred and open to discussion. Curators and artists
populate the same modern, liquid topos. And the same is true about their audiences. After all, a clear-cut
taxonomic distinction between artistic and curatorial practices would undermine the epistemologies of
our own art world.

In current exhibition design, especially in museums other than art museums, a similar tendency to create
cabinet-of-curiosity-like exhibitions can be observed. Celebrated in recent research as an ancestor to the
modern museum, the Wunderkammer has “acquired the status of  [a] universally admired role model”
which “embodies a playful space of  investigation and interaction” between objects and viewers (Collet
2014:47). In fact, after the turn of  the millennium, the Wunderkammer way of  exhibiting became a new
fashion trend for curators of  non-art museums, a beloved way to re-present or invigorate collections that

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might seem out-of-date.3 From museum stores rendered visible to the public to temporary exhibitions,
museum curators and exhibition designers often prefer the æsthetic of  artifactual density, unusual
juxtapositions, and a display system that presents metaphors and allegorical themes visually. Could the
reason for this “revival” be that the contemporary Wunderkammer qualities correspond to the current
multiplicity and perplexity of  representations, which museologists, curators and artists-as-curators
have to manage? Or is it perhaps that ideas about the history of  exhibitions and the role of  museums in
Western culture are made more visible by the high-tech and spectacular staging of  current cabinets?

Sir Henry Solomon Wellcome (1853–1936) was a passionate collector, fascinated by the “art and science
of  healing throughout the ages” (Bailey 2008). By the time of  his death, he owned a huge collection
of  books and objects related to the history of  medicine and a wide range of  other artifacts vaguely or
explicitly connected to the body, such as weapons, instruments of  torture, sex aids, samples of  hair
of  various historical figures, etc. The collection was stored for the better part of  the twentieth century,
as the building bought to house it was destroyed during World War II and because during the post-war
years the emphasis shifted from the collector’s objects to his library. In 2003, the exhibition Medicine
Man: The forgotten museum of Henry Wellcome at the British Museum celebrated the 150th anniversary
of  the collector’s birth, presenting some 700 items from the original collection. In 2007, this exhibition
was permanently housed at the restored Wellcome Building in London, offering “a manifestation
of  Wellcome’s vision and a glimpse of  the vastness of  his collection” (Bailey 2008). The exhibition is
organized by type or theme in cellular boxes in the style of  a Wunderkammer (Figures 6-7): the objects
selected do not illustrate a strict scientific history of  medicine, nor do they play a solely didactic role
in medical terms. Wellcome’s attitude for collecting anything that seemed relevant to the body is also
illustrated. This type of  presentation not only relates to the history of  the collection itself, but also to
the history of  exhibiting medical collections in general. It allows a degree of  free associations on behalf
of  the viewer and enables curators to tell an array of  stories.

In 2010, the Wet Collections of  the Museum für Naturkunde (Natural History Museum), Berlin, were
re-staged in the restored East Wing of  the building. The collections comprise one million zoological
specimens, preserved in 276,000 vials full of  ethanol (Glazebrook 2011). These numbers alone would

Figure 6. Medicine Man exhibition (introductory hall), the Wellcome Building, London, UK. Photo: Esther Solomon, 2015.

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Figure 7. Medicine Man exhibition (detail), Wellcome Collection, London, UK.


Photo: Esther Solomon, 2015.

make Damien Hirst jealous, let alone the fact that part of  this collection is presented as an art installation
to the public (Figure 8). The transparent vases, arranged in glass and metal constructions in a high-tech
environment, are cleverly juxtaposed with light sources. They certainly follow the æsthetic principles
of  contemporary art and comply with the most recent, high museographic and scientific standards
(Figure 9). The result looks like a contemporary Wunderkammer of  significant scientific and cultural
value. In addition, as long as the exhibit can easily be perceived as an art installation, it might open up
more possibilities for visitors to become involved with the exhibits in a playful manner.

The temporary exhibition WeltWissen–World Knowledge was staged at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, in
2010-11. It was the first major exhibition after the city’s reunification to celebrate Berlin’s cultural and
scientific history. It was therefore dedicated to various anniversaries: the 200 years of  the Humboldt-
Universität, the 300 years of  the Charité, the 300 years since the first statute and first publication by the

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Berlin-Bradenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the 100 years of  the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft


and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften and the 300th birthday of  the
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. All these institutions collaborated to organize the exhibition as a unique
joint project4 (Hennig and Andraschke 2010). The objects on display, which all belonged to university
collections and archives of  Berlin, represented various fields of  scientific research, and their manner
of  exhibition intended to illustrate different taxonomic views and methodological approaches. At the
core of  the exhibition, the “Lichthof-Installation” (Figures 10-11) was created: an out-of-proportion
Wunderkammer, a huge, site-specific construction in the rotunda of  the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the result
of  teamwork between Mark Dion, the “WeltWissen” team and the designer of  space4 | teamstratenwerth.
The objects on display were chosen following “less strict criteria” than those followed for other parts
of  the exhibition (Meyer 2010: 84). Not accidentally, the selection was made by Mark Dion, the team’s
artist (Meyer 2010:84; te Heesen 2010: 91). Visitors first encountered a spectacular light show at the
back of  the installation and had to walk to the front to discover the exhibits and get a view of  the whole.
Objects placed on higher shelves could be examined with media-assisted binoculars. Dion organized
objects in this contemporary Wunderkammer following the old-fashioned, modern scientific taxonomy:
Naturalia (“Natural Sciences” in Dion’s words: geology, paleontology, botany, zoology, etc.), Humania
(“Humankind”: physical anthropology, anatomy, etc.), Artificialia (“Noösphere”: archeology, history, law,
philosophy, etc.) (te Heesen 2010: 92-93). The “Lichthof ” was conceived as “a prologue and an epilogue
to the exhibition” (Meyer 2010:84). It offered a vivid, visual representation of  the world of  sciences and
the very concept of  world knowledge, and it created a strong impression through its massive dimensions,
number of  accumulated objects, ample free space, stage design and lighting. It functioned as an art
installation per se, rather than an exhibition strategy of  a science museum. It actually promoted the
generation of  real life experiences, rather than the acquisition of  knowledge. After all, is it not a similar
amazement at the world, its phenomena and the infinity of  facts, that leads scientists to study, research
and produce ideas? As was explicitly mentioned in the catalogue, “[…] art [often] reflects the core
of  science and its limits” (Meyer 2010:84).

Figures 8-9. The “Wet Collections,” Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin.


Photos: (left) Carola Radke. Courtesy of the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, 2015; (right, detail) Michael Fotiadis.

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Figures 10-11. The Lichthof-Installation, WeltWissen (World Knowledge) exhibition, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2010-11.
Photos: (fig. 10) Eberle & Eisfeld, Berlin. Courtesy of WeltWissen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; (fig. 11, detail) Brigida González. Courtesy of
WeltWissen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

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Beginning with the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris and its Grande Galerie de l’Évolution
that reopened in 1994 (a central cultural project of  the François Mitterrand presidency), many natural
history museums in Europe have favored the large scale Wunderkammern as an attention-getting spectacle
on their premises. Other museums have followed suit. In particular, new displays of  old European
ethnographic museums (now labeled “world museums”) seem to capitalize on the cabinet-like mode
of  exhibiting their collections. One such example is Horst Bredekamp’s proposal for the Humbolt-
Forum in Berlin, one of  the largest contemporary German museum projects. It is an institution that will
accumulate Berlin’s former colonial collections (the former Museum für Völkerkunde and the Museum
für Ostasiatische Kunst) and exhibit them at the Stadtschloss. The core of  this exhibition will be a
“recreated Kunstkammer,” proposed as a space “of  wonder and gazing” which is hoped to replace the
display of  colonial booty with “commemorative collecting” (Fuhr 2009). The Parisian Musée du Quai
Branly organized the exhibition of  its collection along similar lines, without however stating a clear
association with the Wunderkammer (Collet 2014:66-67).

WHY ARE MUSEUMS AND ARTISTS WORKING AS CURATORS SO FASCINATED WITH


WUNDERKAMMERN TODAY?
In “liquid” modernity, none of  the mid-twentieth century certainties exist. As key conceptual divides (nature/
society, local/global, peace/war) become negotiable, hybrid realities become au courant. If the interpretation
of  objects and collections by museum professionals is no longer valid or, in the best case, constitutes only one
possible interpretative rationale among many, then a new space is created for the apparently personal, special
and often inspiring narratives that contemporary artists offer through their curatorial projects and associated
displayed artworks (Keene 2006:185-98; Macdonald 2003; Solomon 2011:105-110; Walsh 1992).

The cabinet of  curiosities represents a totally different set of  organizational principles than the Enlightenment’s
formal taxonomies and codified relationships between objects, species and specimens. As a place for conversation,
exchange, and sharing of  knowledge among a limited number of  people who gathered there, the cabinet was
based on metaphor, allegory and various, not always rational (by modern standards) associations between its
objects, making the production of  meaning more or less a poetic act (Hooper-Greenhill 1992:78-104).

Perhaps these are the values that strike contemporary practitioners as engaging, intriguing and
appropriate for today’s audiences. For them, as for artists, it seems time not only to get rid of  strict
taxonomies, but also to try to reconnect the human to the natural. Eleni Kamma, a Greek artist who
lives and works in Belgium and the Netherlands, recently presented her Wunderkammer for the group
art exhibition Terrapolis, in Athens, Greece.5 In the gardens of  the École Française d’Athènes, a
respectful cultural institution with a long history of  promoting knowledge of  the past, Kamma revealed
connections between juxtaposed botanical specimens, tools, vessels, and human and natural objects
from former colonies, and she questioned established epistemologies such as that of  the anthropological
discipline (Figure 12). The whole installation and its curatorial work ended up being an investigation
of  the social, historical and cultural importance of  things.

Beatrice von Bismarck describes curating as “a process of  bringing together previously unconnected
things, people, spaces and discourses” (Reichert 2011). If this is true, then the contemporary cabinet
allows freer associations with displayed objects than any modernist, purified, scientific perception
of  exhibitions has ever been able to (Bann 2003, 2006; Ulmann 2010). Actually, metaphor and imitation
also become key tools in selecting objects for display, as is the case of  Wunderkammer-like displays curated
by art historians (Lasser 2015).6 As there is no fixed meaning in this kind of  installation, it is easier
to demonstrate that there are multiple – in fact, infinite – readings possible for viewers. By its very
conception, the contemporary cabinet proclaims that any classification system or system of  description or
representation is partial, flawed and biased.7

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Figure 12. Eleni Kamma, Enlever et Entretenir V, 2015. Four vitrines, books, natural and
cultural objects, tools. Commissioned and supported by NEON Organization For
Contemporary Art, Greece – Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, for the exhibition
Terrapolis, French School of Athens, 2015. Photo: Esther Solomon.

Because they present an alternative history of  exhibited objects (Lasser 2015:228), contemporary
cabinets encourage not only a different approach to knowledge, but also an interdisciplinary – if
not participatory – way of  learning. This mixing of  disciplines is particularly relevant to projects
conducted in university museums and to miscellaneous collections and donations, which may adopt
didactic approaches to both the meaning of  objects and the role of  key social institutions, museums and
universities included. As King and Marstine have shown, such curatorial projects undertaken together
with staff and students at university collections are capable of  producing radical critical thinking,
comparative epistemologies and new trends in museum theory. They introduce new values in art and
new elements in the way museums produce meanings, especially when artists collaborate with non-art
museums (King and Marstine 2005: 266-291).

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In a way, the current tendency of  cabinets to reimagine the organization of  knowledge can be linked
to the Internet experience. As they bring together objects from history, music, art, design, literature,
biology, geology and other disciplines, they reenact a universal world of  knowledge as conceived prior to
its division into current disciplinary categories. In parallel, the Internet is a domain in which disparate
representations and knowledge from every discipline come together. Users are free to make uninhibited
choices and create personal taxonomies. The web transforms visitors into collectors of  pictures, texts,
videos, etc., selected with or without scientific criteria and classified in rational, symbolic or simply
idiosyncratic ways. Almost all of  us have our own cabinet of  curiosities in our personal computers, visited
and shared at will. Navigating in these “collections” is usually rhizomatic, to use Deleuze and Guattari’s
term (1987), rather than chronological. It is heterogeneous and not necessarily hierarchical. It lasts
from seconds to hours and produces thoughts, feelings and knowledge. This fact renders the experience
of  contemporary cabinet-like exhibitions even easier to access and similar to everyday life experience.

The Internet also allows artists to create museums, cabinets, collections and exhibitions online and to
distribute them effortlessly, outside the market system (with which they have had a love-hate relationship
throughout modernity).8 In some cases, such digital Wunderkammern also involve the development
of  new audiences by allowing personal choices concerning the inclusion of  specific objects into invented
collections, choices that represent each individual who gets involved in the visual production of  a flexible
and personal display system. This is the case of  the Wunderkammer digital experiment proposed by Lisa
Meyer and Chris Creed to the British Library Labs in 2014.9 The experiment involved the development
of  a digital prototype with which members of  the audience could recontextualize the huge digitized
collections of  the British Library. In a Wunderkammer of  their own creation, virtual visitors could display
selected objects and images drawn from a database, thus subverting the authority of  the curator and
of  the artist-curator as well.

CONCLUSIONS
Whether as a temporary installation or as an exhibition pattern, museums, artists and curators are
turning to the Wunderkammer as an artistic/museological theme, and thereby inviting fascination with
the allegorical and the irrational, reconnecting the human with the natural, and allowing historicist
concepts to re-enter the scene. Through the re-emergence of  cabinets we can legitimately forget, at
least for a brief time, the Enlightenment “order of  things,” the education of  nation-state citizens and the
visual arrangement of  “eloquent” object taxonomies.

These “museums within museums” probably reveal the end of  a discussion that was powerful for so
long in New Museology and critical art theory, that of  the much debated “crisis of  representation”
(representation of  anything – scenes, disciplinary fields, nations, tendencies or discourses). Curating
cabinet-like displays makes us think of  postmodern curating as post-representational, a process that, as
Nora Sternfeld recently stated, turns “the museum into a public space where things are ‘taking place’
rather than ‘being shown’”(Sternfeld 2013).

The contemporary Wunderkammer is also a useful tool in the hands of  museum practitioners because
it shifts the emphasis from texts to objects. Within the modernist context of  knowledge production,
objects were seen as evidence of  solid academic results usually disseminated through publications. When
exhibited, they needed long explanatory texts serving as mediators between them and the viewers.
Contemporary cabinets allow objects to be seen as structures of  artifacts open to any interpretation,
thus possibly rewriting the history of  material culture (cf. Lasser 2015). In this way, they follow the
conceptual ideal of  modernist art creation while including the postmodernist quest for “tagging,” that is,
the possibility not only to attach other exhibits to the object-exhibits but also to put personal “tags” on
them, thus resisting the dominant museum view (Solomon 2011:108).

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Evidently, such curatorial projects create two distinct levels of  object hierarchies. The first connotes the
permanent collection which is securely “protected” and “defended against audacious, subjective or simply
non-scientific uses” (before or after the artist’s intervention), through inventories, publications, labels
and rather predictable displays. The second depends directly on the artist’s work, which we still expect
to be special, innovative, provocative and (fortunately, we would say) temporary. This temporal dualism
is safe enough not to invalidate (literally deconstruct) the age-long museum tradition of  disciplinary
authority, in which museums offer the public some innovative shows in order to catch up with current
trends in curating and/or in cultural theory. Museums present themselves as discursive fields where art
and curatorial practices overlap, in a democratic and politically correct manner in an age of  instability
and change. Experiment and playfulness, two basic aspects of  being in postmodernity, can be dealt
with, even superficially. As Colleen Sheehy, co-curator of  Mark Dion’s Cabinet of Curiosities said in 2001:
“Through an archaic style of  museum display we achieved something that museums today are struggling
to reinvent, suggesting (ironically) the possibility of  the cabinet of  wonder as an important new model
for museum exhibitions” (Sheehy 2006:25-26).

More than anything else, these “ancestral wonders” reveal the heterotopic and referential dimension of  the
museum as “a space of  difference” (Lord 2006:1-14; Solomon 2011). This is the difference between objects
and their meanings – the ideas and associations that are activated not only by the accumulation of  disparate
things and times and divergent interpretations by scholars and specialists, but also by inspirational
uses of  objects made by artists-curators, by participant artists and, of  course, by visitors. Having
consciously embodied the role of  a rational critic of  a universal and “true” order of  things, contemporary
Wunderkammern render the conceptual links between exhibits and represented ideas more obvious than ever.
Postmodern or liquid modern, with or without a future, museums do, indeed, have an interesting present.

NOTES
1 The term is used here interchangeably with the collocation cabinet of  curiosities. Wunderkammer is the singular form of  the word, and
Wunderkammern the plural.
2 The Ottoneum is a seventeenth-century building, considered the first theater in Germany. It now serves as Kassel’s Museum of  Natural History.
3 See for example the conference Curiosity 2.0 organized in Dresden in 2015 on the role of  cabinets of  curiosities in contemporary
art. The event marked the 250th anniversary of  the founding of  the Academy of  Fine Arts in Dresden. For the occasion, Mark Dion
carried out his first project in Dresden, The Academy of  Things. http://www.contemporaryand.com/exhibition/curiosity-2-0-the-
cabinet-of-curiosities-in-contemporary-art/ (accessed October 11, 2015).
4 The Technische Universität Berlin, the Freie Universität, the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and the Deutsches Museum, Munich, were
involved as partners.
5 The exhibition “Terrapolis” was the fruit of  collaboration between the École Française d’Athènes, the NEON Organization for
Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece, and the Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK. It was staged at the gardens of  the École and was
curated by Iwona Blazwick, Director of  the Whitechapel Gallery. It was held from May 27 to July 26, 2015.
6 Curator Ethan Lasser confronts the displays of  two similar Staffordshire teapots at the Museum of  Fine Arts, Boston and the
Milwaukee Art Museum (2015). The first one evokes traditional taxonomic displays based on Linnaean structures of  knowledge,
while the second one employs the Wunderkammer visual principles by mixing teapots and fossils, thus implying the interconnection of
the natural and the human and the role of  imitation of  nature in the production of  such artifacts in the eighteenth century.
7 See the magazine Cabinet, “designed to encourage a new culture of  curiosity, one that forms the basis both for an ethical engagement
with the world as it is and for imagining how it might be otherwise” http://cabinetmagazine.org/information/index.php (accessed
October 11, 2015).
8 The Orchard in NY (2005-8), the Transmission in Glasgow, the Catalyst in Belfast, the City Racing in London (1988-1998) and the
Artemisia in Chicago are but a few examples of  mostly artist-run exhibition spaces which now exist on the web.
For example: http://www.catalystarts.org.uk/ (accessed October 14, 2015). Projects also exist on behalf of  universities, another
institution in crisis. One of  the oldest and best-known is Bruce Robertson and Mark Meadow’s “MICROCOSMS: Objects
of  Knowledge,” a project of  the University College of  Santa Barbara that mines the collections of  nine campuses that comprise the
University of  California (Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz),
and seeks to reunite them digitally on the Internet. According to its initiators, “Objects reside in teaching or research collections;
in departmental or personal assemblages of  memorabilia; in the limbo of  closets and cabinets, temporarily obsolete and disposable,
but never disposed. They are the sources of  knowledge production, the storehouses of  that knowledge, and the means of  its
dissemination. There is one space where all these aspects of  objects may once have existed under the same roof and that is the 16th
century Curiosity Cabinet; there is one realm where they may be virtually reunited, and that is the Internet.”
See http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/rob_mead.html (accessed October 12, 2015).
To see the project online: http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/publications/lectures/98-99/microcosms/workshops/frames.htm (accessed
October 12, 2015).
9 http://labs.bl.uk/Wunderkammer (accessed February 8, 2016).

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