My name is Stephanie Fritz and for my class in Museums and Collections I have interviewed three professors who loaned items to our class’s Cabinet of Curiosities. This is an exhibit that we put together in February of 2012 that will be on display until February of 2014 in the Ruth Warner Towne Museum of Truman State University.

Cabinets of Curiosities were collections of objects displayed in glass cases much like our modern china cabinets. There were some that even took up whole rooms in palaces. They have been known in Europe since the sixteenth century. These cabinets were often structured around items that were rare or novel. Items that went into these cases during the time included: corals, statuary, books, and animal skeletons; one of the most valued objects was the horn of a unicorn. In the sixteenth century, the Cabinet of Curiosities was used to bring items together that were new and unseen and that collectors felt needed to be displayed to the world. The educated who developed these collections often believed that these items were evidence of God’s ability to change nature.

During the seventeenth century, interest in items of antiquity began to blossom and royal families would often use Cabinets of Curiosities as a way to display their antiquity collections. During the eighteenth century, some of these displays were first opened to the public. With the nineteenth century came easy access, to all people, of these cabinets. They became so popular that they expanded into Curiosity Museums, some of which can still be seen in larger, comprehensive museums.

Cabinets of Curiosities are again becoming popular. In 2000 and 2001, the Humboldt University of Berlin displayed a modern day Cabinet of Curiosities. This cabinet held things as common as models in plaster and wax to the more bizarre items of fetuses, body parts, and bones.

Our modern day cabinet in the Ruth Towne Museum contains taxidermied animals, toy camels made of camel leather, minerals and fossils, tools of natural science and psychology, and so much more! Listen to what our professors have to say on their own personal collections and Cabinets of Curiosities! Then think about your own collections and what curiosities it holds.