PHOTO BY JASON MEERT
REPURPOSING THE WUNDERKAMMER: BUILDING A NEW SPACE FOR SCIENCE AND ART p In the fall of 2014 the Harn Museum of Art will open the yearlong exhibit Repurposing the Wunderkammer, an
exhibition with an international array of artists working the idea of the cabinet of curiosity as a way to consider the relationship between science and art.
Left: Macho by Eugene Parnell. Top right: Sean Miller during one of his first visits to see the Florida Museum of Natural History’s collections at Dickinson Hall, Sept. 17, 2013. Right center: Termite pulled from the Walls of an Anonymous Gallery by Sean Miller for his CLIF project. Right bottom: Armadillo, a research photo by Sean Miller for his CLIF project.
School of Art + Art History (SA+AH) Assistant Professor Sean Miller and Stuart McDaniel, assistant professor in UF’s Department of Biology, recently combined efforts to create Repurposing the Wunderkammer: Building a New Space for Science and Art. The project’s name is derived from the precursor to the present day art and natural history museums, known as Wunderkammer — cabinets of curiosities or cabinets of wonder. “We worked with the Florida Museum of Natural History to engage students, faculty and staff at the Florida Museum of Natural History, Department of Biology and SA+AH in the arts and sciences, build dialogue and produce events that seek a middle ground between art and science,” Miller says. “Wunderkammer, the eclectic sixteenth- to seventeenth-century collections that contained natural specimens, scientific instruments, illustrations, art, ethnographic items and other curiosities, provided the conceptual framework for the investigation.” 16
Muse Magazine | Spring 2014
Miller engaged students in the project through a thematically related studio art course taught at both the Florida Museum of Natural History and WARPhaus, the SA+AH’s off-campus studio facility. In the fall of 2014, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art will present an exhibit by the same name featuring artists from Argentina, Finland, Sweden, Germany and throughout the U.S. who are responding to the idea of the cabinets of curiosity. “The Repurposing the Wunderkammer project was initiated in response to efforts in the SA+AH and the College of Fine Arts to be more interdisciplinary and to work creatively with research that is going on across the UF campus,” says Miller, noting that the project has brought together visiting artists, scholars, faculty, museum staff, students and the general public to revisit the idea of the Wunderkammer as a lens for mining museums.
COURTESY OF GRAPHICSTUDIO
By Lauren Walter
p Herbarium by Mark Dion.
The Repurposing the Wunderkammer project was funded by the Creative Campus Catalyst Fund, and the events are co-funded or supported by the Florida Museum of Natural History, Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Analogous Thinking Grant and the School of Art + Art History Visiting Artists/Scholars Committee Marston Fund.