Exhibition: The Secret Museum
Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle de Rouen, Backroom
An exhibition exploring the poetics of hidden, untouched and curious collections from around the world in photographs and artifacts, by Joanna Ebenstein, co-founder of Observatory and creator of Morbid Anatomy.
To visit the exhibition website with complete image gallery and installation views, click here.
Photographer and blogger Joanna Ebenstein has traveled the Western world seeking and documenting untouched, hidden, and curious collections, from museum store-rooms to private collections, cabinets of curiosity to dusty natural history museums, obscure medical museums to hidden archives. The exhibition “The Secret Museum” will showcase a collection of photographs from Ebenstein’s explorations–including sites in The Netherlands, Italy, France, Austria, England and the United States–which document these spaces while at the same time investigating the psychology of collecting, the visual language of taxonomies, notions of “The Specimen” and the ordered archive, and the secret life of objects and collections, with an eye towards capturing the poetry, mystery and wonder of these liminal spaces. In tandem with this exhibition, Ebenstein has organized a 2 week “Collector’s Cabinet” at the The Coney Island Museum, which will showcase astounding objects held in private collections, including artifacts featured in her Private Cabinet photo series of 2009.
To download press release, which includes sample images, please click here.
Opening party: Saturday April 10th, 7-10 PM
On view from April 10th-June 6th
3-6 Thursday and Friday
12-6 Saturday and Sunday
ASSOCIATED LECTURES AND EVENTS
Congress for Curious People at the Coney Island Museum
2-day symposium exploring the idea of collecting curiosities in the 21st century as well as the politics, history, and changing methodology of collecting and collections. Also on view will be “The Collector’s Cabinet,” an installation of astounding artifacts held in private collections. A week of themed lectures at the Coney Island Museum will precede the symposium:
The Saddest Object in the World
An Illustrated Meditation by Evan Michelson, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, Morbid Anatomy Library Scholar in residence
Date: Monday, April 12th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn
Admission: $5
Taxidermy in the Fine Arts
Robert Marbury of the Minnesota Association of Rogue Taxidermists
Date: Tuesday, April 13th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn
Admission: $5
A Brief History of Automata
An Illustrated Lecture and Demonstration by Mike Zohn, Obscura Antiques and Oddities
Date: Wednesday, April 14th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn
Admission: $5
A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science and Bad Taste
An Illustrated Presentation By Dr. Pat Morris, Royal Holloway, University of London
Date: Thursday, April 15th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn
Admission: $5
Charles Wilson Peale and the Birth of the American Museum
An Illustrated Presentation by Samuel Strong Dunlap, PhD, Descendant of Charles Wilson Peale
Date: Friday, April 16th
Time: 7:00 PM
LOCATION: * Coney Island Museum, Brooklyn
Museums, Monsters and the Moral Imagination
An Illustrated lecture with Professor Stephen Asma, author of Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads and On Monsters.
Date: Thursday, April 22
Time: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: * Observatory, Brooklyn
Admission: $5
Three Unique Medical Museums in Northern Italy
An illustrated presentation by Marie Dauenheimer of the Vesalius Trust
Date: May 1, 2010
Time: 8:00 P.M.
Admission: $5
Experimenting with Death: An Introduction to Terror Management Theory
An Illustrated Lecture by Michael Johns, Former Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming
Date: Thursday, May 6
Time: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: * Observatory, Brooklyn
Admission: $5