Treasures and seldom seen objects from the University of Minnesota's scientific, cultural, and historical collections fill the curio cabinets of international artist Mark Dion in his new installation at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum. Drawing from the wide range of collections at the University, the exhibition departs from the usual art museum exhibition by displaying natural history specimens–minerals, plant samples, fish skeletons, and taxidermy birds, for instance–with art and other cultural objects, making for a truly wondrous display. The exhibition Mark Dion: Cabinet of Curiosities--Dion's first project in the Twin Cities and the upper Midwest--is on display from February 24 through May 27, 2001 as part of the University's Sesquicentennial celebration.

Through this fascinating and panoramic display, Dion examines the distinctions between "objective" science and "subjective" art and the logic of classifying systems that shape knowledge and memory. He utilizes the European Renaissance tradition of the Wunderkammern (literally "wonder chamber" or cabinet of wonder), in which early collectors carefully displayed varied objects to astonish and edify viewers. Many of these private collections became the basis for public museums in the late-18th and 19th centuries.

In preparing for Cabinet of Curiosities, Dion has been in residence at the Weisman since the fall of 2000, collaborating with museum staff, University of Minnesota collection curators, and students. Dion and Weisman director of education and coordinating curator Colleen Sheehy taught a University class fall semester entitled "The Making of Collections, Knowledge, and Museums." The nine students in the class have become co-curators of the exhibition, researching collections, developing plans for the display, and assisting with the installation of the objects. They are both graduates and undergraduates with majors in art, art history, theatre arts, and museum studies.

Approximately 600 objects from more than 30 of the University of Minnesota's stellar collections are displayed in nine cabinets. Each cabinet is organized according to a theme, based on Renaissance ideas about how the world was structured: The Underworld; The Sea; The Air; The Terrestrial Realm; Humankind; The Library or Archive; The Allegory of Vision; The Allegory of Sound and Time; and The Allegory of History. Objects have been culled from such collections as James Ford Bell Map Library, the Owen Wangensteen Historical Library of Medicine and Biology, the Social Welfare History Archive, the Kerlan Collection of ChildrenÕs Literature, the Humphrey Forum, the Entomology Collection, the Herbarium, the Ornithology and Mammal Collections, and the Jane Goodall Institute for Primate Study, among others. On the wall opposite the cabinet display, a "salon wall" displays a dense array of two-dimensional objects.

Sheehy commented, "The exhibition offers visitors an example of an older, and actually very engaging, style of museum display. The use of unexpected objects will invite viewers to think creatively, to consider new connections between things that we donÕt normally see together."

Since the late 1980s Dion has been producing intriguing exhibitions that demonstrate how arts and scientific institutions present and classify objects. His recent projects include The Thames Dig for Tate Modern in London; Roundup: An Entymological Endeavor at the Smart Museum in Chicago; and The Great Chain of Being in the 1999 exhibition The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Mark Dion: Cabinet of Curiosities was originally organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, Columbus with the support of the Ohio Arts Council, the Puffin Foundation, and the Wexner Center Foundation.

The exhibition's presentation at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, utilizing University of Minnesota collections, was curated by Mark Dion, working with University students, and is supported in part by the University of Minnesota Sesquicentennial Celebration, the Bell Museum of Natural History, and the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute.