8th Annual Mary L. Heuser Lecture featuring Christopher Monkhouse

Cabinets for Collections: From Wunderkammern to the Athenaeum

April 21, 2016

The Wheaton Friends of Art welcome Christopher Monkhouse, Eloise W. Martin Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, for a lecture exploring the history and design of masterwork cabinets for collections. Often as fascinating as the objects they were created to contain, these cabinets reproduce the Wunderkammer—the Renaissance “wonder-room”—in miniature form, magnifying the artistic and intellectual value of their contents.  Of particular interest is the Providence Athenaeum’s tour-de-force Egyptian Elephant Folio Cabinet, conceived and executed in the 1830s by John Russell Bartlett and Frederick Catherwood.

Ellison Lecture, Watson Fine Arts, 6:00 p.m.


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