CANCELED - Member Lecture: “Curiouser and Curiouser: The Peculiar Popularity of the Wunderkammer Aesthetic in Twenty-First Century Museums"
THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO UNFORSEEN CIRCUMSTANCES. OUR SINCERE APOLOGIES FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
“Curiouser and Curiouser: The Peculiar Popularity of the Wunderkammer Aesthetic in Twenty-First Century Museums"
Presented by Dr. Nicholas E. Bonneau (Visiting Scholar of Science, Technology, and Society at Franklin and Marshall College)
Join us for a look at cabinets of curiosity and how these displays have seen popularity in recent years. “Kunst-und wunderkammern” translates to “cabinets of art and marvels,” is often shortened to “wunderkammer,” meaning “room (or cabinet) of wonder.” Dr. Nicholas Bonneau, traveling professor at Franklin and Marshall College will discuss this and more in his talk.
There is much to say about museums lately. Over the last decades, cultural institutions around the Anglo-American world faced hard truths about their most treasured artifacts and specimens. Admirably, many have owned up to the colonial structures of violence and control that facilitated their collection and have embraced change. From the encyclopedic Smithsonian Institute to the specialized Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, they have either divested themselves of these ill-gotten gains or are in the public process of doing so. But is this the whole story?
In the museum world, aesthetic choices are as much performance as opportunities for progress. Loud and well-funded virtue signaling can camouflage the distain of museum leaders and professionals for the ethical and artistic sensibilities of the plebian. Overfilled shelves and dusty wood-paneled rooms have been found guilty of imperialist sympathy and were summarily executed in the “Place de la Social Media.” True, the minimalist designs and clean white walls that took their place provide well-needed room for active and engaged learning, but they leave uncomfortable questions in the minds of onlooking patrons and donors. “Was there something perverse in our enjoyment of these collections?” “Did our curiosity make us guilty of complicity?” “Was the problem the collections or is it collecting itself?” The persistent popularity of museums who have rejected changes suggests that the answers are at best contested and complex. Join Dr. Bonneau as we explore this ethical and aesthetic revolution, the peculiar popularity of those institutions who have ignored its call, and the questions such active or passive resistance raises for museum scholarship and management in the future.
