A fox, dressed in a spirited and colourful outfit, points a gun at me; what a welcome! Being interested in history as well as the macabre or the extraordinary, the exhibition Microkosmos: The World in a Wunderkammer is extra special to me. The exhibition offers an opportunity to switch off your thoughts by simply looking and feeling. You may get carried away in a small world of peculiarities.
The exhibition is about an elusive reality, which came to an end, according to Redmond O'Hanlon, when Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published. That book consigned this world full of exotic animals to the realm of fantasy and thus also heralded the end of collecting bizarre specimensena in the popular cabinet of curiosities. Yet the interest never completely disappeared. The fascination, and perhaps hope, is still alive. O'Hanlon: "I still like to think there is a unicorn out there."
Ode to collecting
The exhibition is a long-cherished wish of outgoing director Harry Tupan. It consists of more than three hundred objects drawn from at least fifty collections, including the personal collections of Midas Dekkers, Redmond O'Hanlon, Boudewijn Büch, Ramsey Nasr and Henk Schiffmacher. The latter, according to Tupan, lives amidst his own Wunderkammer. I already saw some examples of this in Forum Groningen.
I am also impressed at Schiffmacher's cabinet at the Drents Museum. In today's rational world, we can look beyond the mainstream and wonder a little more. Tupan explains that you have to be somewhat unique yourself to be interested in the extraordinary objects and stories. It helps to be curious about the exotic world of imagination.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nobility and wealthy citizens collected objects from all over the world. An ostrich egg, mounted on a beautiful silver base as a table piece, crafted coconuts. It was all about showing that one was 'of the world'. Zoos are another consequence of this possessiveness. With exotic animals, you showed your wealth and world power.
Curiosities
There is a clear demarcation of artefacts into fascinating themes: Artificialia, Exotica, Naturalia and Scientifica. With good use of colour and cleverly placed openings, giving you a glimpse of other worlds in advance, you get the feeling of being on an exploration. There is a beautiful engraving of Ole Worm's Museum from 1655 showing the most fascinating objects.
With historian Franck Smit, I look at the engraving in more detail: a sawfish with a real 'saw' hanging above the image, a monkey skeleton and an automaton: a human-looking automaton that could move around the room and pick things up. People were also interested in this at the time, according to Smit.
He says the scale of the engraving allows you to discover more and more curiosities and study them in detail: "God's creation. A reflection of the wonders of nature in miniature; a microcosm." According to Smit, even before Darwin's masterpiece, there was an (incipient) awareness among some people, through research and observation, that certain remains of (medieval) fabled animals were fake.
Magic
Redmond O' Hanlon's curio cabinet includes a hanging doll about which he tells a fascinating story. On one of his trips, he has such an 'elaborate' doll received. These dolls - wood with ribbons and markings around the neck - are used by medicine men to impose curses. If a person wishes someone dead he goes to the medicine man. The curse is very well done psychologically, according to O'Hanlon, because the cursed person becomes isolated and this eventually causes the person to indeed exit life after about four months. The number of knots in the ribbons shows how many curses have been successful.
Another fetish comes up. O'Hanlon came with a request for a fetish for his own protection. Around midnight he received one from the medicine man. It contains a child's finger; the child's spirit would protect him. One of the conditions, however, was that his wife should not wash her noble parts with it, otherwise the fetish would lose its power. At Heathrow airport, the object was scanned and, according to O'Hanlon, it does indeed contain a finger.
The wonderful world of the Wunderkammer is a delight for the eye and mind. The same goes for the accompanying and eponymous publication.
