Exhibition at the Fonds Helene et Edouard Leclerc focuses on cabinets of curiosities

An essential feature of Renaissance and Baroque culture, an instrument of knowledge as well as of aesthetic pleasure, at a meeting point of art and science, the cabinet of curiosities disappears before rationalism in the Age of Enlightenment, mainly surviving in the secret museums of some nostalgic collectors. At the beginning of the 20th century, it only aroused the interest of historians, amateurs of the bizarre and the surrealists who appreciated its strangeness and poetic aspects. We needed to wait till the following century to witness the cabinet of curiosity achieve a paradoxical resurgence and take on a new lease of life. After having gained acceptance thanks to ‘La Licorne et Le Bézoard’, an exhibition in Poitiers, France, in 2013, which proposed to retrace its history, the cabinet of curiosities benefits from a very different approach in the