20
Boar's Head
Museum of Systematics and Ecology,
Biological Sciences
Moving away from the first part of our exhibition, we enter the second part, in which similar sorts of objects are organized according to contemporary structures of knowledge. While this more contemporary space offers a very different kind of experience for the visitor, its roots in the sixteenth-century curiosity cabinet are evident, revealed by the many points of resonance between the two galleries. The similarity of the objects included in the sixteenth- and twentieth-century spaces illustrate that many of our categories today are every bit as arbitrary as they were then. Indeed, all the categories in this room, from the disciplinary divisions, to comparisons of form, measurements of space, or assemblages of tools and mementos, would have been perfectly appropriate in any curiosity cabinet.
We signal the resonance between the two spaces from the outset; a boar's head positioned next to an introductory panel for the contemporary space refers back to the caribou head placed at the beginning of our curiosity cabinet. If there are negative connotations in having a pig's head representing the modern university, of course we did not intend them.
