Exhibition

The Wunderkammer (literally “wonder room,” more usually known in English as “cabinet of
curiosities”), which emerged in 15th-century Europe as a repository for rare and beautiful

objects from around the world, not only paintings and sculptures but items such as
taxidermied animals, botanical specimens, maps, celestial globes and Oriental ceramics, is
viewed as the prototype of the museum. Wunderkammer were galleries offering a glimpse
into the vast realm of the unknown; small-but-perfectly-formed stimuli for a wealth of
imaginings. Yet beneath these collections whose beginnings coincided with those of the
Age of Discovery, there also lay an imbalance between collector and collected, and
inquisitive scrutiny of other cultures.
As advancing globalization renders our world more homogenous, questions of what
constitutes culture and tradition, and how to engage with other cultures and peoples, are
being revisited. The phrase “museum piece” suggests that an object has reached the end
of its particular road, but here, five artists will research and collect history and resources,
adding modern technologies to the mix as they attempt to rework things in ways that
transcend time. Coinciding with the opening of a new museum next to the Toyota Municipal
Museum of Art, Wunderkammer to Come:  From the Uncompleted, a Beginning will explore the future
potential of museums, both art and other, as places for the practice of cultural
representation.

Artists: Liu Chuang, Taus Makhacheva, Gabriel Rico, Yuichiro Tamura, Danh Vo