Modern/Contemporary Art and the Curiosity Cabinet

10-10:30: Coffee

10:30: Welcome (Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Seton Hall University)

10:45-11:45: Lawrence Weschler, Keynote address: “A Natural History of Wonder.”

11:45-12:15: Kirsten A. Hoving, Middlebury College, “Thinking Inside the Box: Joseph Cornell’s Cabinets of Cosmic Curiosity.”

12:15-1:15: Lunch

1:15-1:45: Melissa Ragain, University of Virginia, “Wonder as a Way of Seeing: Gyorgy Kepes and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies

1:45-2:15: Matthew Palczynski, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Organizing the Curious Damien Hirst”

2:15-2:45: Patricia Allmer, Manchester Metropolitan University (UK), and Jonathan Carson & Rosie Miller (artist collaborators), University of Salford (UK), “Playing in the Wunderkammer”

2:45-3: Break

3-3:30: Joanna Ebenstein, Morbid Anatomy Library, “To Every Man his Cabinet or The Morbid Anatomy Library and Cabinet and the Revival of Cabinets of Curiosity.”

3:30-4: Roundtable with artists, led by Jeanne Brasile, Seton Hall University

4-5:30: Reception

You can find out more here and get directions by clicking here. This symposium is being produced in conjunction with a new exhibition called Working in Wonder at the Walsh Gallery at Seton Hall University; You can find out more about that by clicking here.

All of the photos you see here are drawn from my Private Cabinets series; you can see the full collection by clicking here; the first two images are from the collection of Tim Knox and Todd Longstaffe-Gowan; the bottom image is from the collection Evan Michelson of Obscura Antiques (and also more recently the television show "Oddites.")