From Cabinet of Curiosities: Mark Dion and the University as Installation, ed. Colleen J. Sheehy. University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Objects and Facts

For me, the Bird Collection at the University of Minnesota was a continually disarming experience. I eventually became accustomed to row after row of identical specimens, only to open a cabinet and find myself faced with a single, human-sized heap of feathers and cracked flesh – an ostrich doubled over and piled directly at eye level. With the intention of inconveniencing the staff as little as possible, I arranged for my first visit to the collection on a Friday, when graduate students and staff would already be in the collection at their weekly bird-skinning get-together. The door to the collection is tucked away behind a corner, and to get the attention of the staff and students, who may or may not be inside, one needs to bang hard.

I was introduced to the collection by a woman who appeared happy for interest in the collection but slightly suspicious of my motives, as was standard in my initial meetings with curators. Like the others, she had a vast store of precise knowledge about her collection and her specific area of study. She was half-willing to explain basic concepts to an obviously intrigued but uninformed party but distracted by a never-ending influx of work. That first day, I learned the basics of bird skinning. Before mounds of sawdust, the smell of thawing blood, and a cabinet full of tiny drying carcasses, I was too overwhelmed to block incoming information no matter how inconsistent with my own personal preferences.

For my part in Cabinet of Curiosities, I worked in the animal collections primarily because of an interest in object-oriented epistemology but also because of an unfortunate childhood attraction to animals in drawers. A good deal of my youth was spent at the old Science Museum of Minnesota, seated in one of the dimly lit halls in front of heavy wood cabinets, pulling open drawer after drawer of mounted beetles and flies. The prospect of sitting in an academic insect collection with not one but dozens of drawers filled with the same type of fly was too much to pass up.

As an artist, I had been thinking a good deal about the meaning of objects and the feasibility of communication through objects, so the chance to study with objects that have historically been sources of knowledge and means for communication seemed personally useful and applicable. I pushed aside my objections to an entire cultural schema that allows for the “collecting” of animals and found a group of curators, collectors, and scholars who were, in their way, doing their part to change the world for the better. Wary of me at first, each of the people I encountered were generous with their time and knowledge, trusting to an extent that I have not often seen, and supportive of our project.

Looking back, what most interests me about the Cabinet of Curiosities project are the transactions that took place, the contractual agreements, and the level of institutional and personal trust that was in the air. I am probably not fully aware of the value of many of the objects I was permitted not only to have trucked across town but also to place in a critical context in the exhibition cabinets. Each object, for me, now represents a complicated web of transactions – telephone calls and letters from institution to institution, personal calls and e-ails, visits and talks, loan letters and invitations, time and trust.

I had to find objects that suited both the project and my tastes. Collection curators had to agree to allow objects to leave their collections. These objects had to be carefully packed. Transport had to be arranged. The objects had to be accounted for when they entered the museum, and we had to install the objects in their cabinets. After the exhibition, each object had to be accounted for again by the museum, transported home, and checked back into its place. Any damage, missing pieces, or other problems required an extensive new set of transactions.

The human effort and complicated nature of each transaction represents culture in a way reminiscent of the Renaissance wunderkammern. In those, objects and specimens from vast geographical reaches were collected and displayed. Those objects represented complex transactions as well as systems of value. Whether a bird is precious to you because you alone have the means to access the fresh fruit necessary to keep it alive, as was the case in the Renaissance, or whether it is precious because the species is no longer extant, as happens today, its presence in the cabinet represents an amazing, complex culture and no small measure of power. An entire world – provenance and culture, power and knowledge, and hope – was situated in each object in our cabinets. The cabinets were structured and intelligible but overwhelming, with a capacity for evoking wonder – proper wunderkmmern.