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Types Of Collections: Wunderkammer and Etc.
by Luka on Sep.28, 2010, under Assignments
The three types of collections that are discussed in Kimmelman’s article The Art of Collecting Light bulbs are: Rembrandts, Wunderkammers, and categorizing things. Rembrandts are things that give people a sense of nostalgia. They give a sense of history behind them. Some people who used this type of collection are people such as Walter Benjamin, who collected old books. The correlation is that he has a connection to the type of collection he has. He has enjoyed books and therefore feels a need to connect them. Another example that is in the text is of a Stalinist labor camp survivor who collected keys no longer in use. This probably reminded him of the camp that he was forced to be a prisoner of.
One of the other types is categorization. The idea of this collection is to categorize certain sections and sub-sections of a collection and type of art. A museum that did this was The Decoy Museum. It took wooden duck decoys and categorized them by certain distinctions that people would never guess to look. This correlation is that idea of needing to make order in things that don’t seem to need order or organizing things in a way that is easier to see correlations between the artwork that museums are known to do. Museums organize artwork with the intention of connecting certain types of artwork with others to give the audience the sense of a higher meaning that the whole collection shares.
The third is the Wunderkammern. A Wunderkammern is a “ cabinet of curiosities”. It is made up of rare and uncategorized types of objects. It was started in the Renaissance period in Europe. They were meant to organize things that seemed to be chaotic and unfitting. They contained exotic and rare and unique items. They are displayed in shelves and drawers as well as all over walls. It was almost a closest of collections, which were often geological or from natural sciences. There is one image on the back of this of a Wunderkammer. It is from the Me Berlin Collectors Room Website. It is a photograph of the Wunderkammer. The title of the Wunderkammer is Oblricht. The country of origin is Austria. It is still around but was created from what I can tell During the Baroque period.
A Wunderkammer From http://www.me-berlin.com/?lang=en#/wunderkammer