Overview

Curiosities from the Cabinet features 36 museum objects including an ancient Babylonian tablet, a 21st-century webpage, a skeleton marionette and a colony of live ants, found in UK museums from Weston-super-Mare to the Shetland Islands. Over 40 people from inside and outside the museum world - curators, conservators, visitors, users, artists - talk about these objects with knowledge, passion and even tenderness. We listen as British Museum Assyriologist Irving Finkel explains the oldest known map of the world; David Kohn of the American Museum of Natural History describes how Darwin's weed garden contributed to On the Origin of Species; and novelist and 'Janeite' Cindy Jones spins her own story around Jane Austen's writing table. This book will inform and intrigue anyone who likes visiting museums.

Full Product Details

9780995516700

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Curiosities from the Cabinet offers a glimpse of the past of museums, then a fresh exploration of their collections. Far from being a defunct form, left behind by time, the idea of the cabinet of curiosity continues to entice and surprise. This book does too.' David Anderson, Director, National Museum Wales 'This is both an accessible and illuminating introduction to some wonderful objects.' Kate Arnold-Forster, Director, Museum of English Rural Life, Reading

Author Information

Rebecca Reynolds has worked in museum education since 2006; firstly at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and then as a visiting lecturer in Museum Studies and museum education consultant at The Museum of English Rural Life, Reading University. The core of her work is making museums and collections accessible to visitors, and developing creative and innovative ways of exploring them. Minho Kwon trained as an illustrator at the Royal College of Art in London and worked as an artist and lecturer at the Paju Typography Institute in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea before becoming a freelance artist.

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