Microcosms - Macrocosm and Microcosm

MACROCOSM AND MICROCOSM

The objects in the Curiosity Cabinet formed a microcosm--a world in miniature--which provided insight into the nature of the macrocosm--the cosmos in its incomprehensibly immense entirety. Through possessing and understanding the representation of the world provided by the curiosity cabinet, the viewer gained a sense of control and power over the larger world outside.

The collections of objects created in the sixteenth century also served to represent the collector himself--as do contemporary collections--demonstrating the collector's status, wealth, education, and power to his peers. They also displayed the resources of a local province within the context of the greater world. The relationship between the collection and its collector was seen as having a deeper significance, however; the human body itself was believed to be a microcosm, an encapsulation of cosmic dynamics. As the collection stood in relation to the world, so stood the viewer in relation to the collection, a microcosm within a microcosm. The curiosity cabinet, therefore, served as a mirror reflecting the viewer as well as the outside world, mediating between the microcosm of the viewer and the macrocosm of the universe.

Ultimately, the Curiosity Cabinet was anthropocentric both conceptually and practically: the true center of the collection was its viewer, who could survey and comprehend the entire assemblage and, by extension, the world itself. The viewer was the activating agent of meaning in the cabinet; the meaning generated by the interlocking relationships of the objects was not intrinsic to the objects themselves, but originated in the mind of the viewer. Without the viewer to create categories, hierarchies, and analogies, the objects remained a silent jumble of miscellany. In our Curiosity Cabinet, we placed a human skull, with its optical organs reconstructed in wax, on a central pedestal to represent the central role of the viewer in the sixteenth-century microcosm.

{Essays}
{Gallery}

{Microcosms}