Current Library Exhibits

Cabinets of Curiosities II

(January - February 2010)

Cabinets of curiosities, known in German as Wunderkammern, literally "room of wonders", became popular in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. In many ways, they were precursors to public museums, which were first established in the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries. The collections held in Wunderkammern were meant to be encyclopedic and to represent natural and human-made wonders from around the world.

As part of their coursework for the Fall 2009 semester, students enrolled in the First Year Seminar (FYS) The Complete Amateur Naturalist (FSEM101-A20) or in Introduction to Museum Studies (ARTH 230) were required to create cabinets of curiosities.

Students in Professor Betsey Dyer's FYS developed a small, focused, labeled collection to be chosen according to a "personal" classification system, and then explained and justified in a written statement. Each of Professor Niederstadt's Museum Studies students developed a research project that created a theme-driven cabinet of curiosities and analyzed some aspect of it in relation to museum history or theory.

Visit these intriguing cabinets now on display in the Wallace Library Atrium and the Watson Fine Arts Building.