“THE WORLD MADE WONDROUS: The Dutch Collector’s Cabinet and the Politics of Possession” presented a luscious contrast to the austere exhibition design typically seen at LACMA’s Stuart and Linda Resnick Pavilion, a Renzo Piano building whose gallery spaces conform to the modernist preference for neutrality over ambience. Here, these nondescript galleries were fashioned into a re-creation of a seventeenth-century wunderkammer: Faux-mahogany panels replaced white walls, theatrical lighting guided visitors to illuminated niches painted in jewel tones, and sturdy iron pedestals elevated a menagerie of curiosities. On display within this lavish environment was a wide-ranging and far-reaching collection of art objects, natural specimens, manuscripts, maps, furniture, and gems drawn from LACMA’s permanent collection, as well as from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles ; the rare-book collection of the Getty Research Institute; the Louise M.
Darling Biomedical Library at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens; and Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. Visitors gazed upon medieval stained-glass panels, Renaissance etchings, a fifteenth-century Bohemian bejeweled crown, Ming-dynasty cups carved from rhinoceros horn, Greek amphorae, portraits by Rembrandt, and even a full-size taxidermic alligator suspended from the ceiling, which presided over hundreds of other similarly awe-inducing treasures. Juxtapositions of obje.
