The Public's Treasures: A Cabinet of Curiosities from The New York Public Library

From June 7, 2002 through August 24, 2002
Edna Barnes Salomon Room (Third Floor)
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Avenue and 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788 (directions)

The Library's Salomon Room has become a veritable cabinet of curiosities in the second installment of The Public's Treasures. A phenomenon of the Renaissance, cabinets of curiosities (also known as Wunderkammern, or cabinets of wonder) proliferated throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Encyclopedic in approach, the cabinets emphasized the exceptional, the rare, and the marvelous, attempting to encompass the results both of God's creation (nature) and of man's (art). Today the world's great research libraries exemplify the eclectic and universal nature of the cabinet of curiosities.

After providing a brief history of cabinets of wonder in Europe and Russia, and their successors in the United States, the exhibition displays materials drawn from every division of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, arranged thematically to examine various expressions of the written word, the taboo, and the formation of collections. A final section includes a miscellany of objects connected to famous people and events, to New York City, and to The New York Public Library itself. Highlights include: a 19th-century feng shui compass; "New York in a Nutshell," a souvenir of the city nested in a walnut shell; a copy of Fahrenheit 451, a novel about book-burning, bound in asbestos; a hand-made nail from Monticello; Elizabeth Barrett Browning's slippers; a fragment of a Civil War-era reconnaissance balloon; a pop-up Kama Sutra; and paper made from unusual materials, such as carrot rings and wasp nests.

Ranging from the sought-after to the serendipitous, the eccentric to the exotic, the playful to the prurient, and the commendable to the condemnable, A Cabinet of Curiosities contains many items to edify, delight, and perhaps even surprise modern-day viewers.

Press Release

Exhibition Brochure (PDF)