Library unveils new museum installation, gallery exhibit focused on wonder and curiosity

BY Jason Emerson

editor

More than 100 people turned out this week to the unveiling of the Cazenovia Public Library’s two new exhibitions, which focus on the wonder and curiosity of contemporary art and historical artifacts and present to the public items never before on display.

“This is the culmination of months and months of research, planning, dedication and at times a little heartache,” said library Director Betsy Kennedy. “The educational possibilities of this are just amazing,”

The library’s new permanent display is its WonderCabinet (wunderkammer), which features natural and man-made objects from the library’s eclectic collection, displayed in a nineteenth-century cabinet that was included in the library’s original furnishings and renovated by artist Frederico Meira.

Each of the cabinet’s drawers holds objects of historic, scientific or artistic interest, selected and arranged by the library’s educators and by guest artists. The drawers hold items such as a collection of wind-up toy robots, a collection of various seashells and a selection of jewelry and coins of Roman antiquity.

The exhibition offers a brief history of cabinets of curiosity, including their evolution during the early days of the Renaissance. In an attempt to make sense of an ever-changing world, explorers, physicians and European royalty often collected objects of interest for scientific study. These objects were densely arranged in drawers, boxes and later entire rooms and palaces, and shared with visitors.

The museum inaugurated by Robert James Hubbard in 1890 for the Cazenovia Public Library evolved from the tradition of the “cabinet.”

“Tonight is really Mr. Hubbard’s dream come true,” said Kennedy. “Mr. Hubbard did have a vision — I think we are finally fulfilling that vision … This is like the golden moment of the museum.”

Library Director Betsy Kennedy, middle, welcomed the more than 100 attendees to the Wonder Cabinet unveiling on May 31.

The unveiling of the WonderCabinet occurred with a public reception on May 31, which also happened to be the 186th birthday of Hubbard.

“We think this is wonderful,” said local resident Bobbi Constable.

“It’s delightful to bring all these items into the public eye,” said Bobbi’s husband Bob Constable. “Using the drawers to display more artifacts is terrific.”

The drawers, in fact, were locked for decades when the cabinet resided on the second floor of the library building, said Kennedy. “I couldn’t wait to see what was inside,” she said.

Turns out, they were empty. But the cabinet still had some interesting lessons to give.

Meira said that during his restoration of the cabinet — which took him the entire winter of 2015-16 — nobody knew how old the cabinet actually was. He could find no signatures or construction dates on the piece itself. However, as he took the cabinet apart he found some pieces of old matchboxes which someone had used as shims inside the furniture. Those matchboxes were dated in the late 1870s.

“I wanted to preserve all that was original in the cabinet,” he said. “It looks amazing now to see all the objects in there, the collections. I travel a lot, I see a lot of museums, and this particular museum is unique.”

In conjunction with the new WonderCabinet display, the library also opened its new art gallery exhibit on May 31, called “Assembling Wonder,” a gallery exhibition featuring contemporary curiosity boxes and assemblages created by noted Cazenovia artists.

The exhibit features curiosity box assemblages designed by Cazenovia artists Marlene Burrell, Amanda Bury, Marianne Dalton, Naomi DeMuth, Roger DeMuth, Valentina Heishman, Jonathan Holstein, Kevin Mann, Paul Parpard, Jen Pepper, Dave Porter, Jim Ridlon, and Allyn Stewart. The artists were asked to interpret the words “wonder” and “curiosity,” and to place their work, in the spirit of the early cabinets, in a box of some sort.