Bringing Back the Cabinet of Curiosities, Including a Brief and Wondrous History of the Wunderkammer

• Design & Architecture
• History

An Illustrated Lecture with Susan Harlan:

The cabinets of curiosities of Renaissance Europe brought together objects from the realms of geology, archaeology, and natural history, as well as relics, art, and a healthy dose of the macabre. You might even hang an alligator on your ceiling. These spaces were intimately connected to the domestic sphere, but they also suggested a wide world beyond. And although Wunderkammer did not classify their contents, they are considered to be the precursor to museums.

Harlan will explore the history of these collections and discuss the process of transforming a small room in her own home into a Wunderkammer, complete with taxidermy, skulls, statuettes, beetles, butterflies, rocks, and fossils, as well as some modern elements such as fridge magnets, souvenirs, a glow-in-the dark scorpion paperweight, and her former dashboard hula girl. The lecture will include a special appearance by (the snow globe of) Claude the Albino Alligator from the California Academy of Sciences.