“Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities” opens today through April 28th, and it is a chance to see the museum at FIT as you’ve never before seen it. Senior Curator Dr. Colleen Hill worked on this exhibition stemming from her thesis for six years, and you can tell a lot of thought and effort went into it.
I wasn’t sure how a “cabinet of curiosities” would translate to a museum exhibition—I was picturing a lot of little curio cabinets and not much fashion, but this took the theme to the next level. The famous engraving of Ole Worms’ 1655 cabinet (which really means rooms) was a jumping-off point in illustrating how these collection cabinets were a precursor to museums.
Dr. Hill pointed out that in the drawing, along with eclectic flora and fauna, there were even a few clothing items, as evidenced by a leopard-looking jacket hanging on the wall. An actual leopard Christian Dior jacket is featured adjacent to the drawing, as well as other vitrines representing catalogs of curiosities with the pairing of an illustration next to a fashion item representing nature, art, and anatomy motifs.
The exhibition is revealed in themes, including Specimens, an Aviary (or bird cage), Anatomical Theatre, Artisanship, Kunst Kammer (German for Chamber of Art), Vanitas (17th-century artworks of groups of symbolic objects), Reflections and Refractions (featuring newly invented mirrors and other reflective materials as well as kaleidoscopic designs), and Illusions which features a lot of one of my favorites: trompe l’oeil.
…
