Introduction: Staging the Temporary: The Fragile Character of Space

This volume examines a varied number of exhibition devices that are ephemeral in terms of the precariousness of their structure, but also in terms of their capacity to adapt to the space in which they develop. Special attention will be paid to spaces such as curiosity cabinets, portable museums, show gardens, and a number of unconventional exhibition devices. These spaces often function as microcosms, small autonomous universes that operate individually, but also in relation to their environment. The aim of this volume is to examine their development and relationship to context.

Fuleco the Armadillo

Chapter 2 provides a biogeography of Fuleco the armadillo, beginning with his birth in South America. Gonzalo Argote de Molina placed Fuleco’s carapace in his collection in Seville and Nicolás Monardes visited Argote’s collection, thereafter publishing a woodcut image of Fuleco (1571 and 1574). Fuleco functioned as a specimen in a modern museum in the sense that Argote, following the model of other Renaissance curiosity cabinets, sought to create a theater of the world. Fuleco was an important collectible because his body was considered an American wonder in which nature fashioned a bard on the skin of an unusual horselike animal. By contrast, Fuleco as specimen symbolically enhanced the value of live horses and armor as collectibles in both Argote and King Philip II’s collection.

African Art Reframed

This book approaches the reframing of African art through dialogues with collectors, curators, and artists on three continents. It explores museum exhibitions, storerooms, artists’ studios, and venues for community outreach. Part One (Chapters 1-3) addresses the history of ethnographic and art museums, ranging from curiosity cabinets to modernist edifices and virtual websites. Museums are considered in terms of five transformational nodes, which contrast ways in which museums are organized and reach out to their audiences. Diverse groups of artists interact with museums at each node. Part Two (Chapters 4-5) addresses museum practices and art worlds through dialogues with curators and artists examining museums as ecosystems and communities within communities. Processes of display and memory work used by curators and artists are analyzed with semiotic methods to investigate images, signs, and symbols drawn from curating the curators and exploring artists’ experiences. Part Three (Chapters 6-8) introduces new strategies for displaying, disseminating, and reclaiming African art. Approaches include the innovative technology of unmixing and the reframing of art for museums of the future. The book addresses building exchanges through studies of curatorial networks, south-north connections, genre classifications, archives, collections, databases, and learning strategies. These discussions open up new avenues of connectivity that range from local museums to global art markets and environments. In conclusion, the book proposes new methods for interpreting African art inside and outside of museums and remixing the results.

Houses for the Curious

This article considers a curiosity-driven approach to curating focused on material culture that visitors encounter in physical spaces. Drawing on research into historical curiosity cabinets, it explores how a contemporary notion of curiosity has been put into practice in the new breed of culturally enlightened museums exploring interdisciplinary approaches to medicine, health, life, and art. Based on an inaugural professorial address at Copenhagen University, it reflects on exhibition projects there and at the Wellcome Collection in London. Museums are institutional machines that generate social understanding from material things. Their physical spaces influence how we learn, think, and feel in public; their material collections feed our comprehension, imagination, and emotions; and induce attentive behavior in curators and visitors.