Susan Hiller

As this blog focuses on the Museum as a medium and the relationship between science and art I felt that Susan Hiller is a great example of how an artist has taken on the idea of anthropology and display. She presents objects in a museum conservation style way, for example her Vitrine installation 'From the Freud Museum, 1991-1997' Hiller collected together traces of memory and places objects which would usually be overlooked within the vitrine. 

Mark Dion

Cabinet as a Room

Cabinet of curiosity, Wunderkammer, Kunstkammer Cabinet of wonder.

A cabinet wasn't a piece of furniture, no, it was a room first established in Rome and Naples. Think of it as the beginning of the Museum, but one that is for an individual collecting intriguing objects that would be aesthetically pleasing to the viewer. We could link the Dadaist movement to the Cabinet of wonder if we look at the work of Kurt Schwitters 'Handover Merzbau: View with blue window, 1933' with Constructivist and Dada elements to the work he produces a room with objects contained inside this abstract construction, he looks at the spatial environment and this is where the connection lies. Artists such as Joseph Cornell display objects that have a personal narrative such as 'L'Egypte de Mlle Cleo de Merode Cours Elementaire d'Histoire Naturelle, 1940'

Artists have a habit of being collectors , we have a primal urge to collect much like that of a bird. Walter Benjamin thought that collecting was associated with memory 'Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories'. ''The Artist's urge to accumulate objects in the studios is part of the age-old human impulse to gather and hoard'' J. Putnam. Art and Artifact, The museum as Medium, p12. Our collecting is more involved in the creative process of producing work, it can also form the idea for a work, Annette Messager saw herself as ' The Collector, The Trickster, The Handy-woman, The Peddler and The Liar'

Cabinet of Curiosities