What did museums used to look like? The University of Coimbra's Science Museum attempted to answer this question by pooling together a variety of works from its collections into a single room. The Cabinet of Curiosities exhibition evokes the 18th-century mindset of organizing things according to an aesthetic rather than empirical logic.
The result is a treasure trove of objects. They range from the scientific (a whale skeleton), to the wondrous (the world's largest seed), to the grotesque (a taxidermied donkey), to the deceptively sinister (a carved silver anklet that was used on slaves).
The goal of the Cabinet of Curiousities exhibit is to seem otherworldly, yet also reflective of our reality. In the words of one of the organizers, Ana Yedros: “Translucent glass changes transparency to a golden reflection, unreal and holy. And our reflected image, crossing the border between the two worlds, makes us feel ethereal... immortal, but trapped.”
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