From 18th Century Private Natural History Cabinet to Early Museum: The Spallanzani Museum, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Guest Post by Alessandro Molinengo, Nautilus Shop, Modena

 

Friend Alessandro Molinengo, co-proprietor of the Modena's amazing Nautilus Antiques, brought Evan Michelson and I one rainy night to visit to Spallanzani Museum in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The origins of this museum stem from a "small collection of natural products" opened by priest, biologist and physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani in his home in 1770; today, the collection--some still in their original cases!--is located in the Civic Museum of Reggio Emilia.

I asked Alessandro to write a guest post telling the readers of Morbid Anatomy more about this astounding collection, which had Evan and I literally gasping aloud as we turned each corner; All images are my own; you can see many many more by clicking here or here:

Lazzaro Spallanzani (10 January 1729 – 12 February 1799) was an Italian Catholic priest, biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and essentially animal echolocation. His research of biogenesis paved the way for the investigations of Louis Pasteur. 

Since 1771 he had managed to create a Museum of Natural History in Pavia, which over the years acquired a great reputation, even internationally, and was even visited by the Emperor Joseph II of Austria. 

In 1785, while on a trip to Constantinople and the Balkans, he was accused by the custodian of the Museum of Pavia (instigated by some colleagues) of stealing artifacts from the museum: the story ended after one year with the demonstration of the complete innocence of Spallanzani and punishment of slanderers. 

His indefatigable exertions as a traveler, his skill and good fortune as a collector, his brilliance as a teacher and expositor, and his keenness as a conversationalist no doubt aided largely in accounting for Spallanzani's exceptional fame among his contemporaries; his letters account for his close relationships with many famed scholars and philosophers, like Buffon, Lavoisier, and Voltaire. 

His life was one of incessant eager questioning of nature on all sides, and his many and varied works all bear the stamp of a fresh and original genius, capable of stating and solving problems in all departments of science. 

He died from bladder cancer on 12 February 1799, in Pavia. After his death, his bladder was removed for study by his colleagues, after which it was placed on public display in a museum in Pavia, where it remains to this day. 

Since 1770, Lazzaro Spallanzani set up in the rooms of his home in Scandiano a "small collection of natural products,"which today is located in the Civic Museums of Reggio Emilia. 

It’s a rare and precious document in the history of collecting naturalistic ranked according to scientific knowledge at the end of the eighteenth century. It includes zoological, with particular reference to marine life, paleontological, mineralogical, lithological and botanical gardens, as well as decorative objects, such as pictures, tables and ornaments, testifying, in its diversity, the variety of interests of the scientist. The materials are the result of purchases, exchanges and collections made during the many trips Spallanzani during the summer months, to conduct scientific experiments, and to procure materials for the Museum of Natural History of the University of Pavia.

Purchased by the Municipality of Reggio Emilia in 1799, at the death of scientist, collection has been preserved in its original consistency, finding final location in the Palazzo of St. Francis from the 1830. The current layout of the exhibition is related to the reorganization of collections in 1883 by Alfredo Jona, displayed in several cabinets, some of which are original furnishings of the Spallanzani’s house, following the Linnaean system in use in the late eighteenth century.

You can find out more about the by the Spallanzani Museum of Reggio Emilia by clicking here. All images are my own (click on image to see larger versions); you can see many more by clicking here or here. You can find out more about the Nautilus Shop by clicking here, and can "like" the shop on Facebook by clicking here. The shop is open on Saturdays from 3 until 7 PM or by appointment, and is located at via Cesare Battisti 60 in Modena, Italy.

Lost Libraries and Fake Catalogs: A Renaissance Trope Explained

Musaeum Clausum (the hidden library) is a fake catalogue of a collection that contained books, pictures, and artefacts. Such collections (and their elaborate indices) were a common phenomenon from about 1500 to 1700 and after. Gentlemen and the nobility collected as a matter of polite engagement with knowledge and as a way of displaying wealth and learning; savants made arrays of plants, animals, and minerals as museums or ‘thesauruses’ of the natural world to record and organise their findings; imperial and monarchical collections were princely in their glamour, rarity, and sheer expenditure: these might contain natural-historical specimens but also trinkets and souvenirs from far-flung places, curiosities of nature and art, and historically significant items. For example, taxidermically preserved basilisks shared room with a thorn from Christ’s crown and feathered headdresses and weapons belonging to native American tribes. Browne takes these traditions of assemblage and makes a catalogue of marvellous things that have disappeared...

Read the whole fascinating article about fake catalogues of fictional collections--a common trope, as the article explains, from around 1500 to 1700--on the Public Domain Review website by clicking here.

Image: Engraving from the Dell'Historia Naturale (1599) showing Naples apothecary Ferrante Imperato's cabinet of curiosities, the first pictorial representation of such a collection.

Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory, Open Studios, This Saturday and Sunday, June 4 and 5, 1-6

This weekend please join the Morbid Anatomy Library (as seen above) and sister space Observatory as we open our spaces to the public as part of the Atlantic Avenue Artwalk.

Following are the full details; Very much hope to see you there!

Atlantic Avenue Artwalk
Saturday and Sunday, June 4th and 5th
1-6 PM
543 Union Street at Nevins, Brooklyn
Free and Open to the Public

Directions: Enter the Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

For more about the Morbid Anatomy Library, click here. You can find out more information about the Atlantic Avenue Artwalk, and get a full list of participants, by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory and the exhibition now on view by clicking here.

Photo by Shannon Taggart.

New Book (In English!!!) About Honoré Fragonard's Incredible 18th Century Anatomical Ecorchés!

If the Founding Fathers wanted to visit Body Worlds they could have. Or pretty darn close, at least - they just needed to visit one of the many European cabinets of anatomical curiosities, to see the work of anatomists like Honore Fragonard.

Fragonard's eighteenth-century ecorches were the clear precursors to Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds" exhibits: preserved, injected, partially dissected bodies in lifelike, dramatic poses, with ragged strips of muscle draped like primitive clothing over exposed vessels and nerves. The effect is eerie - like a Vesalius illustration sprung to (half-)life... --Bioephemera, "If the Founding Fathers wanted to visit Body Worlds..."

Much has been said--and rightfully!--about the "uncanny similarity" (as one might charitably say) between the anatomical works of Body Worlds' impresario Gunther von Hagens and the 18th Century allegorical anatomical ecorchés of Honoré Fragonard, cousin of well-known rococo painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard. Bioephemera says it very very well today--as quoted above--and follows with a really nice, extensive review of the new, wonderful, lavishly illustrated Blast Books publication Fragonard Museum: The Ecorches.

To read the entire post on the Bioephemera website--very much recommended!--click here. To order a copy of the book for your very own--also highly recommended!--click here.

The specimens you see above -- and more! -- are housed in the amazing Le Musée de l’Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort (née Musée Fragonard) right outside of Paris; to find out more about that museum, click here. Images as credited; to see more images from the Musée, click here. To visit the museum website, click here.

Image credits and captions:

• Top image: Fragonard's Horseman, found here.
• Second image: Fragonard's man with the mandible, inspired by Samson smiting the Philistines with an ass's jaw, found here.

All other images from the Bioephemera post. Captions, top to bottom:

• Nilgai/Doe of the Indies
• Human Bust
• Human Bust
• Installation view of The Musee Fragonard

"Physica Sacra," Johannes Jacob Scheuchzer, 1735

The incredible images above are drawn from a book which has long intrigued me, Johannes Jacob Scheuchzer's 4-volume early 18th Century extravaganza of art, science and mysticism entitled Physica Sacra.

As described by Christie's Auction House:

'In Scheuchzer's gigantic work, Physica Sacra, the Baroque attains, philosophically as well as artistically, its high point and its conclusion' (Faber du Faur, German Baroque Literature, p. 472). Scheuchzer, a doctor and natural scientist from Zurich, planned the Physica sacra as an explanation of and a commentary on the Bible on natural-scientific grounds. He himself oversaw the illustrations which were largely based on his own natural history cabinet or on other famous European cabinets of rare specimens...

This book seems like a fitting final response to yesterday's very stimulating "Art and the Curiosity Cabinet" Conference at Seton Hall University, where a lot was said about these ways in which early cabinets (and pre-modern inquiry) resided at the borders of art and science, fact and mysticism. I don't think I have ever seen a more elegant expression of these ideas than the content and illustrations of this book, which blends bible commentary with natural history in a bombastic interest in all of the known world of its time, spanning Memento Mori to the Thesaurus of Snowflakes to biblical miracles, all given equal treatment and weight.

Click on images to see much larger and more detailed images; worth your while, I promise! You can see 737 of the images from the book (!!!) (from which the above 7 are drawn) in Greyherbert's amazing Flickr stream by clicking here.

Inspired by this recent post on the Ptak Science Books blog discussing the book; Text from Christie's Auction house description of the book when recently auctioning off a complete 4-volume set.

Images above, top to bottom:

1. Homo ex Humo ('man from the ground', or 'dust')
   
2. Memento Mori
3. Ventriculi
   
4. Heart
5. Columna Ignis
6. Solea cum Squamae
   
7. Thesarus of Snowflakes
   

Modern/Contemporary Art and the Curiosity Cabinet, Conference, Seton Hall University, New Jersey, February 5th

For the curious (sic) among you: On Saturday, February 5th I will be presenting a short lecture as part of the very intriguing looking "Modern/Contemporary Art and the Curiosity Cabinet" conference hosted by Seton Hall University. Lawrence Weschler--author of one of my all time favorite books, Mr Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder--will be giving the keynote address on “A Natural History of Wonder;” my piece will examine the revival of private cabinets of curiosity as explored in my Private Cabinets photo series, from which the above images are drawn. I will also talk a bit about my own Private Cabinet experiment, The Morbid Anatomy Library.

This event is free and open to the public. Full line up and schedule follows; hope to see you there!

Modern/Contemporary Art and the Curiosity Cabinet

10-10:30: Coffee

10:30: Welcome (Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University)

10:45-11:45: Lawrence Weschler, Keynote address: “A Natural History of Wonder.”

11:45-12:15: Kirsten A. Hoving, Middlebury College, “Thinking Inside the Box: Joseph Cornell’s Cabinets of Cosmic Curiosity.”

12:15-1:15: Lunch

1:15-1:45: Melissa Ragain, University of Virginia, “Wonder as a Way of Seeing: Gyorgy Kepes and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies

1:45-2:15: Matthew Palczynski, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Organizing the Curious Damien Hirst”

2:15-2:45: Patricia Allmer, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), and Jonathan Carson & Rosie Miller (artist collaborators), University of Salford (UK), “Playing in the Wunderkammer”

2:45-3: Break

3-3:30: Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Library, “To Every Man his Cabinet or The Morbid Anatomy Library and Cabinet and the Revival of Cabinets of Curiosity.”

3:30-4: Roundtable with artists, led by Jeanne Brasile, Seton Hall University

4-5:30: Reception

You can find out more here and get directions by clicking here. This symposium is being produced in conjunction with a new exhibition called Working in Wonder at the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University; You can find out more about that by clicking here.

All of the photos you see here are drawn from my Private Cabinets series; you can see the full collection by clicking here; the first two images are from the collection of Tim Knox and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan; the bottom image is from the collection Evan Michelson of Obscura Antiques (and also more recently the television show "Oddites.")

"The Keeper of Curiosities" Royal Ontario Museum in the Wall Street Journal

A nice appreciation of the cabinet of curiosity approach to contemporary museum curation in today's Wall Street Journal:

At the [Royal Ontario Museum, aka ROM ], objects taken from its separate collections (fine and decorative arts, history, textiles, archaeology, geology, mineralogy, paleontology and zoology) are often mixed and matched in highly interdisciplinary displays to create a narrative not often seen in the more specialized museums that we are used to. For example, English dresses and slippers from the late 18th and early 19th centuries are displayed next to African and Asian clothing of the same era, alongside printing blocks and a wall-text description of berries used to produce dyes, because one of the points being made is how colors and patterns were dyed or printed onto these fabrics. Comparisons are being drawn about widely divergent cultures and industrial practices.

"In so many museums, curators are telling the story of the objects on display—why this is in the collection, why that is an important piece—while we're trying to use the objects in our collections to tell a story about how people go about their lives here and elsewhere around the world, and often about the intersection of the natural and cultural worlds," she said.
Here's another example: A display contains ceramic vases, silver, clocks, weathervanes and furniture from the 18th century, across from painted portraits of men, women and children who lived in Canada back then. None of the individual objects have their own labels, and only some wall text describes life in that time. Who were those people in the portraits? Who painted them? Where were those chairs and vases made? Did those people own that silver? Presumably, the curators know and aren't telling us. At the ROM, the point isn't so much the individual objects as creating a big-picture view of life at a certain time and place. "We encourage visitors to make connections in their own minds," Ms. Carding said...

The ROM is in some ways a throwback. Before people traveled so much or had such wide access to books and photographs (in short, an education), 18th- and 19th-century museums were cabinets of curiosities that provided a world of collected knowledge, a walk-in encyclopedia of objects both natural and man-made, practical and artistic. It is rare to find this type of institution anymore; museums now are more and more specialized...

Like the original cabinets of curiosities, there is a little something for everyone, but not so much as to bore people. Known as the "Stair of Wonders," the landings between floors have their own miniature displays—seashells or insects or battalions of metal toy soldiers—to perk up interest when it may be flagging. There's also a life-size, walk-through diorama of the St. Clair Cave in Jamaica, with its plaster-cast hanging bats, insects and stalagmites (based on ROM scientists' work at the site). "People here talk about their old favorites; so many people just love the bat cave," Ms. Carding said.

You can read the full article--from which the excerpt is drawn--by clicking here.

Image via Ddrees Art.

Curious Collections and Exhibitions Lecture, EAMHMS Conference, Copenhagen

I really can't watch myself on video, but if you are curious to see what I had to say at last month's Copenhagen-based EAMHMS conference on the topic how medical museums might use wunderkammer-inspired techniques of curiosity and wonder as a strategy to draw people into engaging with scientific and historical objects, you can watch the above video.

To read a nice synopsis and analysis of my brief talk and the following spirited discussion on the blog Biomedicine on Display--the work of the hosting institution, Medical Museion--click here. To read the full abstract for the talk, click here.

Thanks, Thomas, for putting this video/writeup together, and for hosting such an engaging and thought-provoking conference!

Morbid Anatomy Library on the Huffington Post's "Ten 'Cabinets of Curiosities' and Unique Collections from around the World"

Before they made a TV show about Hoarders, steadfast collectors were once held in great esteem. During the Renaissance, the "cabinet of curiosities," or wunderkammer, was a style of curation in the spirit of the sublime junk drawer, a display of weird stuff that didn't go anywhere else. A few hundred years out of fashion, they're starting to pop up again, and we've put together ten examples of our favorites, both full-fledged cabinets of curiosities and the sorts of specialized collections they might draw from. --Travis Korte, "Ten 'Cabinets of Curiosities' and Unique Collections from around the World," The Huffington Post

You can view the full story--with slideshow and special mentions for the Morbid Anatomy Library and our sister spaces Observatory, the Reanimation Library and Proteus Gowanus (pictured above)--on The Huffington Post by clicking here.

Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory, Open Studios, This Saturday, October 2nd, 12-6

This Saturday, October 2, please join the Morbid Anatomy Library (as seen above) and sister space Observatory as we open our spaces to the public as part of the 14th annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour, or "A.G.A.S.T." There will be snacks, beverages, art, artifacts, and, of course, books.

Following are the full details; Very much hope to see you there!

14th annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour (A.G.A.S.T.)
Saturday October 2nd
12-6 PM
543 Union Street at Nevins, Brooklyn
Free and Open to the Public

Directions: Enter the Morbid Anatomy Library and Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

For more about the Morbid Anatomy Library, click here. You can find out more information about A.G.A.S.T., and get a full list of participants, by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory and the exhibition now on view by clicking here.

"The Wunderkammer," Installation by Georg Laue, Me Collectors Room, Berlin

I just came across a rather interesting looking new exhibition at a gallery called the Me Collectors Room in Berlin. Entitled "The Wunderkammer," this new permanent installation is the work of antique dealer/cabinetist Georg Laue, proprietor of the famed Kunstkammer Georg Laue in Munich, Germany, and seems--as you can see in the images above--to include a pretty astounding collection of fine memento mori, ivory Anatomical Venuses, and turned ivory wonders.

From the website:

THE WUNDERKAMMER

ASTONISHMENT
The WUNDERKAMMER rekindles the tradition of the Kunst- and Wunderkammer of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. It imparts an insight into the world view and the standard of knowledge of past centuries and does just what a Wunderkammer was able to do between 200 and 500 years ago: transport the visitor into a realm of sheer astonishment — whether by means of the legendary unicorn, exposed latterly by the cognoscenti as the tusk of a narwhal, an amber mirror flooded with light, or cabinets that only reveal their mysteries to the observant viewer.

DISCOVERY
The quality of the exhibits, numbering in excess of 150, is unique and makes the WUNDERKAMMER one of the most significant private collections of its kind. The juxtaposition of works from different cultures generates its very own effect. The permanent collection places an emphasis on Vanitas (“Consider the fact that you will die”). In the Baroque period, death was already staged with a mixture of devotion, interest, and humour. The scope for interpretation of this topic is manifested by an anatomical model dating from the second half of the 17th century. The organs and the foetus of the laid out body of a pregnant woman can be removed and prompt one to indulge in a playful handling of this miniature.

UNDERSTANDING
The objects in the WUNDERKAMMER exert an incredible fascination and will captivate the curious with a vision of a small, encyclopaedic, unique universe, which ultimately contributing to a deeper understanding of the correlations between art, nature, and science.

This exhibition definitely looks worth a visit! And, for the more curious among you, theme-specific tours of the collection are also available in which, as the website explains, "existential themes such as Eros, death, and transience, as well as the genesis of the collection, form the central focus."

You can find out more about Georg Laue and his Munich shop clicking here. You can find out about more about the exhibit by clicking here.

Found via Wunderkammer. All images from the Me Collectors Room Berlin website.

Evan Michelson of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, "The Culture of Curiosity," Lecture, Coney Island Museum, Sunday August 15, 4:30

Next Sunday at 4:30 PM as part of the Coney Island Museum's "Ask the Experts" Series, Evan Michelson--co-proprietor of Obscura Antiques and Oddities and Morbid Anatomy Library Scholar in Residence--will be giving a reprise of her popular "Culture of Curiosity" lecture, which some of you might have seen at Observatory last November.

If you missed it the first time, or were made curious enough [sic] about the topic to want to know more, do yourself the favor of heading down to Coney to hear Evan wax poetic [sic] in a new and expanded discussion of "the continuing appeal of curated chaos in the home."

Full details follow; very much hope to see you there!

"The Culture of Curiosity"
An illustrated lecture by Evan Michelson of Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Date: Sunday, August 15
Time: 4:30 PM
Admission: $5
Location: The Coney Island Museum

From humble parlor to Princely treasury, the Culture of Curiosity has endured for hundreds of years. In equal parts uncanny obsession, camp statement, melancholy musing, frivolous commentary and timeless metaphor, ultimately it's all about mystery.

Come and join Evan Michelson (Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence) in an exploration of the continuing appeal of curated chaos in the home.

Evan Michelson is an inveterate collector and museum aficionado. She has spent a lifetime obsessing over specimens, lurking in crypts, touring necropoli and gathering information on all things fading from the collective memory.

For about two decades Evan was in and out of various aggressively confrontational/decadent bands. She is currently co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, and Scholar-in-Residence at the Morbid Anatomy Library. She lives in Victorian excess with her husband, a few pets, and many esoteric and uncanny objects.

You can find out more about the event by clicking here. Hope to see you there!

The above photo is a Wax Department Store Mannequin from the Early 20th Century from Evan Michelson's incredible home collection, as seen in my recent exhibition The Secret Museum. You can find more images of her collection here.

The Dangers and Pleasures of Curiosity, from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance

Augustine included curiositas in his catalog of vices, identifying it as one of the three forms of lust (concupiscentia) that are the beginning of all sin (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and ambition of the world). The overly curious mind exhibits a “lust to find out and know,” not for any practical purpose but merely for the sake of knowing. Thanks to the “disease of curiosity” people go to watch freaks in circuses and charlatans in the piazzas. Augustine saw no essential difference between such perverse entertainments and the “empty longing and curiosity [that is] dignified by the names of learning and science.”

I just came across a nice meditation on the history of the debate of curiosity as value or vice on the website of Author William Eamon, author of Science and the Secrets of Nature and The Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy:

The Disease Called Curiosity
Nowadays we think of curiosity as an emotion necessary for the advancement of knowledge, indeed as the well-spring of scientific discovery. It was not always so.

Saint Augustine, in the fourth century, stated the traditional medieval view of curiosity, and it wasn’t favorable. In the Confessions, the Bishop of Hippo made inquisitiveness in general the subject of a vicious polemic, thereby setting the tone for the debate over intellectual curiosity for centuries. Augustine included curiositas in his catalog of vices, identifying it as one of the three forms of lust (concupiscentia) that are the beginning of all sin (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and ambition of the world). The overly curious mind exhibits a “lust to find out and know,” not for any practical purpose but merely for the sake of knowing. Thanks to the “disease of curiosity” people go to watch freaks in circuses and charlatans in the piazzas. Augustine saw no essential difference between such perverse entertainments and the “empty longing and curiosity [that is] dignified by the names of learning and science.”

No difference between gawking at freaks in a sideshow and making investigations in natural philosophy? That’s what the saint said: “From the same motive,” Augustine wrote, “men proceed to investigate the workings of nature, which is beyond our ken—things which it does no good to know and which men only want to know for the sake of knowing.” Augustine’s severe judgment of intellectual curiosity, linking it with the sin of pride, the black arts, and the Fall, became conventional in medieval thought. In the Renaissance, it gave rise to such memorable characters as Doctor Faustus, who bartered his soul to the devil to satisfy his insatiable curiosity and quest for power.

Yet gawking curiosity was the perpetuum mobile of Renaissance science. Early modern curiosity was insatiable, never content with a single experience or object. Whereas Augustine linked curiosity to sensual lust and human depravity, Renaissance natural philosophers saw it as being driven by wonder and the engine of discovery...

...Venice’s maritime empire and its rich craft tradition provided plentiful fuel for wonder and curiosity. The continual contact with exotic commodities, whether herbs from the New World, mechanical toys from Persia, or fake dragons and basilisks, fueled Renaissance curiosity. All that evoked curiosity and wonder became prized objects for collectors, who displayed rare and exotic natural and artifical objects in curiosity cabinets, like peacocks proudly displaying their colorful feathers—indeed, peacock feather, too, were prized objects for collectors.

Pharmacies displayed the curiosities of Renaissance culture. The cabinet of pharmacist Francesco Calzolari at Verona, pictured here, displayed dried herbs, minerals, preserved animals, birds and snakes, including a supposed unicorn horn.

Such objects would become the “curious” things of early modern science. Saint Paul’s admonition, Noli alta sapere, “Do not seek to know high things,” gave way in the Renaissance to Horace’s more hopeful Sapere aude, “Dare to know.”

The transformation of curiosity in the Renaissance was a precondition of modernity. Without curiosity, there can be no scientific discovery, and without discovery, there can be no new knowledge.

You can read this piece in its entirety--and find out more about William Eamon and his work-- by clicking here.

Image caption: Pharmacies displayed the curiosities of Renaissance culture. The cabinet of pharmacist Francesco Calzolari at Verona, pictured here, displayed dried herbs, minerals, preserved animals, birds and snakes, including a supposed unicorn horn.

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory: "The Culture of Curiosity" with Obscura's Evan Michelson, Friday November 13th, 8:00 PM

This Friday the 13th, Evan Michelson--co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities, my favorite store in the entire world and closest thing that I know of to a Morbid Anatomy Giftshop--will be delivering a presentation at Observatory, Brooklyn, entitled "The Culture of Curiosity." This illustrated lecture will explore the contemporary popularity of Cabinets of Curiosity from her unique perspective as one of New York's foremost purveyors and collectors of medical, natural, and industrial curiosities. She will also be bringing artifacts from her personal and professional collection for your perusal and enjoyment. Evan is an excellent speaker, and I can't wait to see her official take on this ever-so-relevant topic. Hope to see you there!

Full details:

Morbid Anatomy Presents at Observatory
"The Culture of Curiosity"
Illustrated Lecture by Evan Michelson, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Friday, November 13th
8:00 (doors at 7)
$5 Admission

The Culture of Curiosity is everywhere these days. Wunderkammer appear in popular art, cutting-edge fashion, film, books and museum exhibitions. This aesthetic has proved surprisingly durable and popular for over 600 years. From temple to home to museum, the Culture of Curiosity continues to exert an irresistible pull on our collective psyches, and it shows no signs of falling from favor any time soon.

Where did it come from? What is it’s continuing appeal? Why is it resurgent at this moment in time?

Let’s see if we can find out.

Evan Michelson is co-owner of Obscura Antiques and Oddities {obscuraantiques.com}, and has been buying, selling and collecting rare, beautiful and uncanny objects for many years. The shop opened in the East Village in 1991, and was a pioneer in the latest renaissance of the Wunderkammer aesthetic. She currently lives in Victorian splendor in Plainfield, NJ, in a cabinet of her very own.

Directions
543 Union Street (at Nevins), Brooklyn, NY 11215 (View Map)

Enter Observatory via Proteus Gowanus Gallery

R or M train to Union Street in Brooklyn: Walk two long blocks on Union (towards the Gowanus Canal) to Nevins Street. 543 Union Street is the large red brick building on right. Go right on Nevins and left down alley through large black gates. Gallery is the second door on the left.

F or G train to Carroll Street: Walk one block to Union. Turn right, walk two long blocks on Union towards the Gowanus Canal, cross the bridge, take left on Nevins, go down the alley to the second door on the left.

For more information about the event, click here. For more information about Observatory, click here. To join the Observatory mailing list, click here. You can join the Observatory Facebook Group by clicking here. For more on the fabulous Obscura Antiques and Oddities, click here; to visit their still nascent website, click here.

Image: Early 20th Century, life-sized wax mannequin residing in Michelson's home collection. Photos of this mannequin--as well as many other amazing objects from Evan's collection--can be found in my photographic exhibition "Private Cabinets;" You can view the entire series by clicking here.

"The Children Sleep in the Cabinet of Curiosities"

Just stumbled upon this lovely image on the always fascinating Ullage Group website. The post, entitled "The Children Sleep in the Cabinet of Curiosities," explains:

...The sketch above is taken from Thackerayana, an 1875 compilation of the graphic work of William Makepeace Thackeray: cartoons, illustrations, travel sketches, marginal sketches. He made this one in the margin of “The Mirror,” a Scottish magazine from 1779. And here’s the passage that inspired it:

A wife is writing to the “Mirror” upon a new affliction which has attacked her husband. He happened to receive a crooked shilling in exchange for some of his goods (the husband was a grocer), and a virtuoso informed him that it was a coin of Alexander III, of great rarity and value, whereupon the good man became seized with a passion for collecting curiosities.

“His taste,” says the wife’s letter, “ranges from heaven above to the earth beneath, and to the waters under the earth. Every production of nature or of art, remarkable either for beauty or deformity, but particularly if either scarce or old, is now the subject of my husband’s avidity. The profits of our business, once considerable, but now daily diminishing, are expended, not only on coins, but on shells, lumps of different colored stones, dried butterflies, old pictures, ragged books, and worm-eaten parchments.

“Our house, which it was once my highest pleasure to keep in order, it would be now equally vain to attempt cleaning as the ark of Noah. The children’s bed is supplied by an Indian canoe; and the poor little creatures sleep three of them in a hammock, slung up to the roof between a stuffed crocodile and the skeleton of a calf with two heads. Even the commodities of our shop have been turned out to make room for trash and vermin. Kites, owls, and bats are perched upon the top of our shelves; and it was but yesterday that, putting my hand into a glass jar that used to contain pickles, I laid hold of a large tarantula in place of a mango.”

You can see the full post by clicking here. You can persuse the entire website by clicking here.

Cabinet of Curiosities of Bonnier de la Mosson, Library of the Museum of Natural History, Paris

While in Paris a last week, I discovered, via a wonderful book called Musées Insolites de Paris, the lavish Cabinet of Curiosities of Bonnier de la Mosson, tucked into the back of a fluorescent-lit modern library attached to the Museum of Natural History in the Jardin des Plantes.

Now, my French is not so good (0k, basically nonexistent) but to the best I can figure, this is the last surviving fragment of the once famed cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson. This collection is discussed at length by Celeste Olalquiaga in a piece entitled Object Lesson / Transitional Object which ran in a 2005 issue of Cabinet magazine. Here is an excerpt from that piece, which discusses the original cabinet of Bonnier de la Mosson at great length:

Hidden away in the endless folds of Paris’s Jardin des Plantes, the Cabinet Bonnier de la Mosson stands as a unique manifestation of the intersection between aesthetics and science. Dating back to 1735, this luxurious cabinet, amassed and exhibited thanks to a family fortune based on the procurement of regional taxes, has the rare quality of combining the atmospheric mise-en-scène of the preceding Wunderkammern with the organizational intent of the later cabinets, producing an original blend of system and fantasy. Considered by many the richest and most imaginative French cabinet of the early eighteenth century, this curiosity cabinet was housed in the hôtel particulier, as the city residences of aristocrats and royalty were known, of Joseph Bonnier de la Mosson (1702-1744), located in the now extinct rue des Dominiques...

Olalquiaga's is the only in-depth piece in English I have found on the collection, and I am still unsure if this cabinet I photographed in the bibliotèque is recreation, fragment, or a curator's fantasy of what the original might have looked like. If any of you French-enabled folk out there could translate the explanatory label for me (click here), I would be most appreciative, and will post an addendum to this post with the new information.

For now, the images will have to do. You can see the full set of image I took by clicking here (and I urge you to do so--there is so much that is wonderful about this cabinet, but only so many images I can fit on this post). You can read Olalquiaga's article for Cabinet by clicking here.

ADDENDUM: James G. Mundie, who you might remember from this recent post, has just posted a translation.

The caption seems to imply the original cabinet was dismantled in 1935, then restored and 'definitively' reinstalled in the library in 1979. One presumes it was preserved relatively intact in the intervening decades. the cases seem to be original, so perhaps the object placement isn't that far off. I wish I had known this was there when I at the Jardin des Plantes last year.

Thanks, James!

ADDENDUM 2: Translation from an anonymous comment:

Bonnier de la Maison Cabinet

These wooden cases were acquired by Buffon in 1744 when they were auctioned off following the death of Bonnier de la Maison, an extremely knowledgeable amateur scientist and connoisseur of art.

They were installed in the King's Garden Room.

Inside these five units made from Dutch wood decorated with serpents a collection of preserved ["dried"] animals.

Disassembled in 1935, they were installed permanently in the museum's central library in 1979.

They are considered an "Historic Monument."

Thanks, everyone, for their help!

The Cuming Museum, London, England

A few days ago I visited The Cuming Museum based on a write-up I had found in my travel bible Weird Europe. The museum is basically the behest of an eclectic family collection consisting of over 25,000 objects complied by independentaly wealthy father/son collectors Richard (1777-1870) and Henry Syer Cuming (1817-1902). The two voraciously collected an astonishing variety of things; here are just a few: objects once residing in the Leverian Museum (essentially a cabinet of curiosity which was divided at auction in 1806, see bottom image), trade books, paper ephemera, games, scientific equipment, Egyptiana, taxidermy, fossils, archeological fakes, royal memorabilia, and curiosities of all sorts.

A later addition to the museum was Edward Lovett's collection of Superstious Objects, donated to the musuem in 1916; sadly, there was very little from that part of the collection on display. Still, the museum is well worth a visit if you are in the neighborhood; it provides a nice illustration of older forms of collecting, and features an intriguing assortment of objects, many embellished by their original meticulously hand-lettered labels (see third and fourth image down.)

Find out more about the museum here. See more photographs from the museum here.