2/2 Wondrous Obsessions: The Cabinet of Curiosities - Secret Knowledge

the cabinet of curiosities that John tried esken built up in his house in Lambeth became a must-see destination for visitors to London Telesca himself was seen as a contemporary Noah and his collection was affectionately nicknamed the Ark with their cabinet of curiosities the traditions built up a snapshot of their world and through their collection we can read their interests anxieties and peculiar fascinations and share the sheer exhilaration of being alive in a world that had suddenly grown bigger through global trade and exploration this is a really good example of that great excitement of global travel John true desk and junior said that this was the mantle of the king of Virginia he meant of course Powhatan the leader or chief of the Algonquin tribes but we probably know Parton better as the father of Pocahontas now we don't know whether traditions got this mantle we don't know whether this is a mantle at all it's probably more likely to be a ceremonial wall hanging and in fact we don't quite know whether this has anything to do with Powhatan but this we know that when Pocahontas was brought over to England and wined and dined by royalty people would have been desperate to get a glimpse of the world that she had come from so people would have throned to the traditions cabinet of curiosity to see this mantle have a little bit of that new world literally within their reach in fact if you look carefully you can see little bits of the mantle where people have plucked out cowrie shells of course this is long before our time when museum objects have been vacuum sealed away from visitors hands the story of how John Frieda's khun's curiosities found their way into one of the most renowned museums in the world is a dark tale of duplicity and one-upmanship when John trade Erskine jr. decided to print a catalogue to publicize their collection he made one big mistake he enlisted the help of his neighbor Elias a Schmo a shrewd lawyer who was an even more determined social climber than he was Ashwin understood the kudos that went with a well-known and really extensive collection he had amassed quite an impressive cabinet of curiosities himself but he had his eyes on the much better known and much more extensive collection of his neighbor's the tree descanse Asheville paid for the publication of jante desk ins catalog so although it was published under the tree desk insane ash mode was already beginning to associate himself with the collection when true Deskin jr. died he left his collection to his wife with instructions that on her death it should be given to Oxford or Cambridge University ashwaldt seized his chance he approached Oxford University about gifting them the trudeau second collection whereto provides us firstly that it should be housed in a purpose-built new museum and secondly that it should be open to the public but in doing so elias national was styling himself ever so certainly as well the owner and the donor of this collection when Trudeau seconds widow died two years later a Schmo moved quickly taking out a lease entre desk ins home and taking possession of the collection it contained it took Oxford University six years to complete the impressive new home for the traditions treasures but on the 21st of May 1683 the building finally opened its doors and became the first purpose-built public museum in the world the new building was named not after the traditions whose collection of curiosities it housed but the Ashmolean museum after Elias Asheville his grand plan was complete Asheville died without an heir but his name is very much with us as his epitaph states as long as the Ashmolean museum dues he will never die all of traditions wonders were now accessible to everyone who could pay the sixpence entry fee one early visitor enthused the Ashmolean is absolutely the best collection of such rarities that I have ever beheld but not everyone too kindly to a load of ordinary people wandering around in search of easy entertainment one aristocrat visiting on Market Day complained the museum was full of all sorts of country folk was still even women were allowed in they run here and there grabbing at everything he grumbled but the museum's opening coincided with a cooling off of a love affair with the cabinet of curiosities the cabinet with its marvelous monstrosities was at odds with the new 17th century spirit of enlightenment this was a period obsessed with systematic order and classification the once loved cabinet became seen as a chaotic feature and many private collections were donated to modern museums in these new well-ordered exhibition spaces the antique was set apart from the contemporary the natural wonders from the artificial and the dizzying variety of the cabinet was rationally rearranged like with like but there's something about the cabinet that we could never quite leave behind I think it's the tantalizing contradiction that lies at its heart on the one hand there's that urge to categorize and understand the world but on the other there's that equally strong urge to experience wonder for the world to defy our understanding while modern museums cater for that appetite for education and knowledge contemporary curators and artists are responding to our yearning for Wonder borrowing from the cabinets startling juxtaposition of objects to force us to look at the world with fresh eyes from the shocking physicality of Damien Hirst's animals and formaldehyde displayed in tanks - Polly Morgan's reinvention of tax attorney creating unsettling pieces that are both familiar and strange and Grayson Perry's clever curation at the British Museum mixing age-old artifacts with new pieces of his own but perhaps the most deliberate appropriators of the cabinet our London artists the corner brothers their cabinet theme show contained new works that are a puzzling blend of fact and fiction fellow cabinet lover Philip who joined me to explore their disconcerting one Durham whale dolphin quite work out what that is actually false killer whales at first to the well matched up with a bottlenose dolphin yeah citation has its got like that as she's been turned on its own look there's teeth marks look alright sockets know so to be matched something knows of the top of it oh goodness look at that a gold-plated pablo escobar's gold-plated hippopotamus skull can you believe that I'd love to believe it it's a good story isn't it yes if you're going to have a gold-plated hippopotamus skull it should belong to a Colombian cocaine baron either absolutely and I love the notion that they imported hippos to Colombia but that's the good thing about these collections of curiosities isn't it each object has to have a story yeah and I don't know if we sometimes wonder or does it even matter whether it's true or not I don't think it does does it I mean it's it's what's been invested in that object isn't it it's what it's been charged with it's kind of a narrative so why do you think contemporary artists are so fascinated with the idea of cabinets of curiosity there's so much in the last decade or so that plays with that concept I think it's looking back to a period before art became digital and conceptual back to the real object I mean I think in a way it started with Damien Hirst with those tanks you know and there couldn't be anything more more of an extraordinary take on the cabinet of curiosities as the physical impossibility of death in the mind yeah that's someone living the shark yeah suddenly up with face to face mouth to mouth with this Leviathan this beasts we weren't used to seeing things like that in a museum in the gallery situation and of course no adjustment notions of mortality as well one of the things that always fascinates me about cabinets of curiosity is that they have a real obsession with death absolutely and it's the memento more Eisen and it's the notion of what something is speaking of your own mortality it's challenging your mortality it's showing you you know this is a mirror held up to you but I suppose it's also strangely comforting then if you have a cabinet where you're collecting these things they're little fragments of existence that you're shoring up against the passage of time I think that's a really good point it's almost so you close the doors on your own mortality carefully controlled and shut away you know these strange things back in the 16th century cabinets of curiosity allowed bold adventurers to make sense of the wonders they were discovering today modern technology has turned us all into collectors with mobile phones we snap up the places we've been the weird and wonderful things we've seen even the food we eat through Instagram and Pinterest we curate our own lives and just like those early collectors we present the things that make us appear as interesting and well-traveled as possible every cabinet of curiosity was a miniature universe and each collector curated his own individual version so every cabinet told a story not just about the world but about the collector himself so in some ways these dusty eccentric antique collections tell us a story that is startlingly Mordan that there is no singular truth about the world just many different stories seen through many different eyes more secret knowledge here on bbc4 next this evening with the trip to the Cairngorms in the footsteps of writer nan Shepard in just a few moments they'll at 9:00 from the sublime to the totally abstract how Picasso's love for the female body became central to his life and work in love sex and art stay with us

Channel: Art Documentaries

Views: 79,660

Keywords: Cabinet Of Curiosities (Museum)

Id: FM5xSyb5EP4

Length: 14min 7sec (847 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 03 2015