A Cabinet of Curiosities

July 23, 2010 - January 09, 2011

Price-Strongwell Cultural Heritage Galleries

Exhibit Details

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, wealthy, educated men set aside entire rooms of their homes to house collections of antiquities, natural history specimens, or other unique objects, often with exotic or novel qualities. Called wunderkammers, these cabinets of curiosities were the early modern predecessors to the museum of today.  A Cabinet of Curiosities is a wunderkammer of extraordinary material culture from Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee, but with some twists incorporated – are all of these objects’ stories absolutely true?