• Exhibition title slide. The background is a black and white illustrated room full of crowded shelves that display rows of animal specimens, tools, and artifacts. The slide reads: Constructing Curiosity with Early Modern Objects of Wonder. Mia Jackson.
  • Ostrich eggs. Armadillo armor. Featherworks. Living birds and reptiles. In the early sixteenth century, hundreds of natural specimens and Indigenous objects were shipped across the Atlantic by Spanish colonizers and arrived in Europe to enamored viewers, who had never before seen such unfamiliar and “exotic” treasures. Political rulers and scientists began collecting these objects across Europe in their personal cabinets of curiosity. Artists, inspired by these proto-museums and their otherworldly contents, created their own “objects of wonder”—composite creations that fused imagery and materials from foreign lands with European artistic traditions. As their name suggests, objects of wonder served as a means of evoking fascination from viewers. But perhaps most visible in these creations are the preconceptions of their makers. In this exhibition, explore these objects within a global context and consider: Are they decorative or distortive? Colonial or cooperative? Enticing or exploitative?
  • Entering the Curiosity Cabinet. An ornate black cabinet freestanding with doors swung open, revealing drawers decorated with miniature carvings and paintings inside. Slide reads: In Duke Cosimo de Medici’s curiosity cabinet, pre-colonial Mesoamerican cloaks were inventoried as “costumes,” and a pair of Aztec masks labeled as “jewelry.” According to surviving catalogues, none of the objects in his collection were sorted by geographical origin, but integrated into Eurocentric understandings of tradition and purpose. Such misappropriations are at the defining core of the curiosity cabinet, or Wunderkammer (“wonder room”). As furniture or rooms that held collections of foreign objects, curiosity cabinets assumed conflicting roles. On one hand, they attempted to preserve and categorize naturalia—flora, fauna, and minerals—alongside artificialia—human-made artifacts like coins and pottery. On the other, most collections were owned by princes or emperors, and were political tools used to impress nobility. Curiosity cabinets in practice exhibited a desire to control and reframe the newly unfamiliar, to reconcile Indigenous artifacts and native species with European conceptions of tradition, nature, religion, and myth. Constructing Curiosity considers how objects of wonder functioned as miniature curiosity cabinets—inspiring awe and fascination in viewers, while also reinforcing a pervasive worldview that erased other cultural and natural histories.
  • Frontispiece of Olaus Worm. A black and white illustrated room full of crowded shelves that display rows of animal specimens, tools, and artifacts. A table with the words "Musei Wormiani Historia" sits in the center. Slide reads: In Duke Cosimo de Medici’s curiosity cabinet, pre-colonial Mesoamerican cloaks were inventoried as “costumes,” and a pair of Aztec masks labeled as “jewelry.” According to surviving catalogues, none of the objects in his collection were sorted by geographical origin, but integrated into Eurocentric understandings of tradition and purpose. Such misappropriations are at the defining core of the curiosity cabinet, or Wunderkammer (“wonder room”). As furniture or rooms that held collections of foreign objects, curiosity cabinets assumed conflicting roles. On one hand, they attempted to preserve and categorize naturalia—flora, fauna, and minerals—alongside artificialia—human-made artifacts like coins and pottery. On the other, most collections were owned by princes or emperors, and were political tools used to impress nobility. Curiosity cabinets in practice exhibited a desire to control and reframe the newly unfamiliar, to reconcile Indigenous artifacts and native species with European conceptions of tradition, nature, religion, and myth. Constructing Curiosity considers how objects of wonder functioned as miniature curiosity cabinets—inspiring awe and fascination in viewers, while also reinforcing a pervasive worldview that erased other cultural and natural histories.
  • Fall of the Rebel Angels. A painting with warm colors and a crowded composition with human and animal forms that extend off the canvas. The figures are unnatural and elongated with disproportionate features. Slide reads: Brimming with chaos, abundance, and bizarre fantasy, Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels is a curiosity cabinet in narrative form. Depicting the first confrontation between good and evil from the Book of Revelation, the image is split between heaven and hell—blue skies and glowing light in the top register, a dark pit of grotesque demons below. These demons, or fallen angels, are not only meant to be sinister but also outlandish, assembled out of recognizable examples of exotic naturalia. In the upper right, a pink inflated blowfish faces the wrath of an angel. Blowfish occur in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and became highly coveted by collectors in the 16 th century. Placed alongside other flying fish in the heavenly sky, Bruegel uses the blowfish to represent a world upside down, made topsy turvy by evil at work. Similarly, in the lower right, he cloaks one of his fallen angels in the armor of an armadillo, reimagined in metal but identical in shape to the species found exclusively in North and South America. Bruegel effectively melds these foreign animals with Christian narrative, juxtaposing his conception of “good”—white, pastel, and robed human angels—with those things the European viewer perceived as evil and diabolical—spines, exoskeletons, scales, feathers, and other alien forms from unfamiliar and distant places that are, in turn, reinforced as all the more strange and exotic.
  • Two detail images from Fall of the Rebel Angels. On the left is a close-up of the blowfish. The fish is light pink with brown hair covering its back. It has long front fins and a spherical body. A human angel to the left raises a sword above his head to strike the blowfish. On the right is a close-up of the demon with armadillo armor. The demon has a human face and red hair and plays a trumpet. From the neck down, the demon has a red insect body covered by a metal armadillo shell.
  • The Rhinoceros. An illustration of a rhinoceros printed with black ink on tan paper. The rhinoceros stands in profile and fills the page with an empty background behind it. The words "1515, Rhinoceros" appear in the upper right corner. A paragraph of printed text in German appears above the illustration. Slide reads: In 1515, an Indian rhinoceros arrived in Lisbon to keen spectators, eager to see the imposing creature from another continent. Shipped as a gift from the Sultan of Gujarat to the ruler of Portugal, the rhinoceros would be memorialized in Albrecht Dürer’s widely circulated and reproduced woodblock print. But Dürer himself never actually saw the rhinoceros in person. On its following journey from Lisbon to Rome, the animal perished in a shipwreck, and Dürer instead crafted his representation based on a merchant’s sketch sent back to Germany from Lisbon. Dürer’s print consequently could be better described as a fantastical impression of a rhino than an encyclopedic representation. Yet the print and its inaccuracies still became a standard image for the rhino in early modern Europe, included in illustrated natural histories for over two centuries.
  • Can you spot Durer's mistakes? Two comparative images side-by-side. Durer's print illustration of a rhinoceros, on the left, is juxtaposed with a photograph of an Indian rhinoceros, on the right. Both are shown in profile with heads lowered toward the ground as if grazing. Slide reads: Dürer’s version of the rhino features hard plates of armor, scaled legs and feet, a scalloped breastplate, speckled skin, and most peculiarly, an extra horn above its shoulders. His mistranslation of the rhino reveals one of the crucial tensions in European objects of wonder. Though artists tried to accurately reflect foreign cultures and species, their models were imperfect—specimens were usually dead and fragmented; images were copied from previous illustrators, who introduced their own errors. Left to fill in the gaps, artists like Dürer inserted their own interpretations and imaginings. As a result, the rhinoceros and its true character would not be fully understood in Europe until centuries later.
  • Maize at the Villa Farnesina. A close-up of a green festoon. White flowers, yellow squash, green pumpkins, blackberries, apples, and brown maize are woven through the leaves of the festoon. Below this is more extreme close-up of the maize in a festoon. Three ears of maize are laid out next to each other with no husks. They are golden brown. Slide reads: Tucked into a framework of botanical festoons, eight groupings of a distinctly North American crop adorn the ceiling of the Loggia of Cupid & Psyche at the Villa Farnesina. Maize was among the first goods to be sent back to Europe by Christopher Columbus in the late 15 th century, and quickly found its way into the imaginations of Italian artists. The botanical festoons at the loggia frame two celebratory scenes from the Cupid and Psyche classical myth. The maize in these festoons, however, contain peculiar inconsistencies. Some ears are depicted with strange, wispy extensions, and most lack any type of shank. Even more unusual, some are comprised of interlocking kernels. It may be that the artist was drawing from a singular detached ear—and a poorly adapted one. Despite their anatomical errors, these American crops on the loggia ceiling are spoils of colonization elevated into the pleasures of the gods. And like the classical gods, European power is expansive, capturing natural resources from distant corners of the earth.
  • A full view of the ceiling of the Loggia of Cupid and Psyche at the Villa Farnesina. A large painted ceiling with two scenes of equal size divided by thick green borders. Both scenes display large groups of nude figures engaged in revelry and indulgence. The figures stand on white clouds, with some wearing Greco-Roman accessories such as robes and helmets. They are of all ages and genders.
  • Platter. An oblong plate with a raised and textured surfac, covered in lifelike shells, water, plants, insects, and animals. It is mostly dark green. A small snake is in the center surrounded by gray ripples of water. Slide reads: A plate or a pond? Covered in highly detailed casts of snakes, insects, lizards, frogs, plants, and flowers, Bernard Palissy’s rustic ceramics transform the domestic and familiar into microhabitats teeming with life. A French naturalist and chemist, Palissy made clay casts of live specimens from nearby ponds and waterways. After sculpting each specimen into a larger composition, the final piece would be coated in translucent lead glazes that retained even infinitescimal details, like the veins on leaves. Inspired by prevailing scientific interests in naturalism, but with a greater interest in the unusual forms from his own backyard than those discovered oceans away, Palissy’s hallmark was to repurpose commonplace forms into the peculiar and highly decorative. The 16 th -century European viewer would have understood artifacts and art based on preestablished categories and classifications. But Palissy's creations, which blur the realms of art and nature much like global objects of wonder, defied and challenged those categories, fascinating viewers with their complexity and novelty.
  • Pilgrim Flask. A bottle-like container with a long neck and a flat circular body. The surface of the container is raised and textured, covered in white and yellow seashells. The shells are embedded into dark green algae or plant matter. On the flat side of the container is a coiled brown snake. Slide reads: Like Palissy’s other rustic ceramics, this pilgrim flask displays his signature reimagining of familiar objects into constructed containers of natural wonder. An object with European Christian cultural significance, pilgrim flasks were used by religious devotees to hold holy oil when traveling to and from holy sites throughout the Middle Ages. By adorning a pilgrim flask in layers of cast seashells, plant matter, and a coiled snake, Palissy turns a recognizable historical object into something newly foreign and exotic. The pilgrim flask is no longer functional as a religious tool, but instead exists purely for visual aestheticism and delight. Palissy also draws on timely themes of migration and scientific exploration through this flask, visually connecting a symbol of human movement across regions with early modern interests in the natural world.
  • Lidded Cup with Ostrich Egg. A small vertical sculpture with a circular gold base decorated in bright red pieces of coral. Suspended on top of the base is a miniature gray ostrich, being led on a chain by an African handler. On the back of the ostrich is a real white ostrich egg topped with a gold lid and red coral. Slide reads: A prized marvel of the curiosity cabinet, the ostrich egg was an early modern emblem of creature myth and Christian religious devotion. This gilded cup was crafted for the cabinet of Archduke Ferdinand II, and fuses sculpture, goldsmithing, and vibrant coral fragments with a polished ostrich egg. A colonial construction of foreign rarities, this cup plays on the interests, knowledge, and expectations of the European viewer. In the eyes of one person, the cup may have been a reminder to observe God diligently. To another, it might have been a container for myth and magic. Coral was thought to have amuletic powers, and ostriches were believed to be robust animals—strong enough to digest iron, represented by the horseshoe in its mouth. This ostrich egg cup, like many other objects of wonder, recontextualized “exotic” species within a European worldview, and in turn, played an underestimated role in sponsoring political power and cultural dominance.
  • Coyote shield. A circular shield with a two-dimensional coyote in the center displayed in profile. The background is made of red bird feathers, and the coyote is made of blue feathers outlined in gold. The coyote's mouth is open displaying gold teeth and a dark red tongue. Lines of blue, yellow, and red flow from his mouth and around the bottom left side of the shield. Slide reads: Assembled with the vibrant feathers of tropical birds, this shield is one of just four surviving works of its kind from colonial Mesoamerica. Produced and used widely by the Nahuas, featherworks have complex individual histories that were largely erased through their placement and misinterpretation in European collections. Featherworks were worn by Nahua rulers, nobles, and warriors, and crafted with striking feathers acquired through trade and tribute payments. They were understood to display tonalli, an animating force that adhered in humans, animals, and certain objects, including particular types of feathers categorized as tlazohihhuitl, or living beings. Tonalli was a central concern of artists who took great care in the handling of living feathers, which displayed bright colors and high gloss. The coyote shield is a Nahua feather mosaic that combines living feathers with less colorful, inanimate ones to create a work that holds and displays its own tonalli. Once placed on a ruler or warrior, featherworks like this shield amplified the powerful tonalli of their wearers. Unlike European objects of wonder, which used native species from Pre-Columbian America to create exotic novelties, Indigenous peoples like the Nahuas incorporated environmental materials as part of important cultural traditions that existed firmly outside a Eurocentric worldview.
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