Art Frame: PAC 2019: Into the Wonder Room

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

PAC 2019: Into the Wonder Room

INTO THE WONDER ROOM
February 13, 2019 - January 5, 2020

Montreal’s Pointe-à-Callière (PAC) Museum of Archaeology and History presents a new exhibition Into the Wonder Room that features the mysterious and quite unique world of cabinets of curiosities. It showcases over 1,000 rare, exotic and quite unusual objects. The impressive installations take visitors on a journey around the world, as a homage to the beauty and strangeness found in it. The exhibition brings together objects from the collections of the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France, as well as hundreds of items from the collections of several museums in Québec and Canada, as well as from private collectors.

Curiosity cabinets historically represented and still represent the passion of individuals to collect certain items, displaying them in their homes as both decorative or museum type of pieces. Presently, if collecting rare items, some collectors keep them in secure safes or storages spaces. Collectors often have individual preferences as to the items they chose to collect, determined by their personal hobbies, travels, or scientific interests.

The PAC Museum exhibition offers visitors an opportunity to explore curiosities from other times and places. It presents the history of cabinets of curiosities, or “wonder rooms”, down through the ages, from the homes of European aristocrats, great explorers, and scholars in past centuries.

The final zone of the exhibition is also dedicated to the “curiosity rooms” at the homes of seven Montréal and Québec based contemporary collectors. It displays their passion and personal universe through the filmed interviews and objects from their collections. Of a special interest especially to children would be the display of objects belonging to a collector Denis Allison who is at once a plangonologist (doll collector), an arctophile (collector of old stuffed toys), and a ludophile (toy collector).

The exhibition layout is a kaleidoscopic display of large installations, each representing an immersive wonder room that recreates the spectacular effect of a cabinet of curiosities, including scores of multicoloured butterflies and birds, along with a multitude of unusual objects from around the world. It also showcases mysterious objects, fantastic creatures, mounted animals, and scientific instruments. Among the more impressive and fascinating are a mastodon tooth, a dinosaur egg, an albino moose, a Victorian-era ornithological display case, aKaga school samurai armour, a two-headed calf, an armillary sphere, and Virginia deer whose antlers became locked in battle, causing their death.

Francine Lelièvre, Executive Director of Pointe-à-Callière states:

“It’s important to remember that cabinets of curiosities are the ancestors of today’s sciences and museums. With this exhibition, we are paying tribute to explorers, scientists, and collectors from every era, driven by a quest for knowledge, cultural diversity, far-away lands, and a rare and sometimes mysterious or exotic object that can spark awe or astonishment in the viewer. In this sense, Into the Wonder Room is a veritable invitation to discover and be fascinated by the diversity of the world. It will surely appeal to visitors of all ages”.