Loca Miraculi, Gallery One: The Vegetable Cabinet

Loca Miraculi_room 1_wood cabinet surrounded with branches

Loca Miraculi_exhibition entrance wood columns

Loca Miraculi_room 1_wood cabinet with deer and birds

Loca Miraculi_room 1_cabinet shelves with taxidermied birds

Loca Miraculi_cabinet detail with deer and roosters

Loca Miraculi_room 1_wood cabinet with minerals shells

Loca Miraculi, Gallery One: The Vegetable Cabinet

2008-2013

mahogany, pine, and brass cabinet; elm branches

The first gallery explored two ideas important to the history of cabinets of curiosities. One is the division of the natural world into three main kingdoms: animal, vegetable (what we would now call ‘plant’) and mineral. This system of classification, first proposed by Aristotle, continued to be used through the Renaissance.

The second idea is the classification of materials and objects as naturalia or artificialia. In early cabinet collections, naturalia referred to substances found in the natural world. Artificialia referred to objects made of natural substances altered or combined by people. Here the wood cabinet is an example of artificialia, while the bower of elm branches surrounding the cabinet is an example of naturalia.

Document cabinet made by John Townsend, 1760-70, Newport, Rhode Island.

Click this link for a video tour of the Animal / Vegetable / Mineral gallery:

https://vimeo.com/666547863