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'Palace of Wonders' is royally intriguing

May 11, 2006 12:50 am

By SHEILA WICKOUSKI

For THE FREE LANCE-STAR

Are you a pack rat? You are in good company and share a long and honorable history.

From cavemen to tycoons, humans have always collected objects. From the scientific studies of the early Greeks to the statue collections of the Romans to medieval churches and Renaissance palaces--in almost every culture and time, nobles, scholars and churchmen have collected things.

With new geographic discoveries and increased wealth, the scientific interests of 17th-century Europeans expanded to include not only precious material but objects of natural history. By the 18th century, what once graced only private collections was made available to the public when the British Museum and the Louvre (with Napoleon's spoils) were established as public institutions.

If you've ever wondered how an old private museum might have looked, the Walters Art Museum's re-installment includes three galleries that re-create the experience of visiting one as an imaginary Flemish nobleman in the Southern Netherlands in the 1600s.

The palazzo-like structure of the four-story Walters building is itself a treat and the entry into a fantastic world.

From here, one enters The Hall of Arms and Armory, with its collection of masculine virtue and power arranged with panache as befitting the imaginary nobleman's identity with the Hapsburg royalty.

The main attraction, Chamber of Wonders, is filled with intriguing things that excite the curiosity of young and old alike. Manmade and natural objects (dried rattle snakes, a stuffed alligator, a "unicorn skull"), as well as treasures from America, Asia and Africa, are arranged in cabinets and categorized--an encyclopedia of nature and human ingenuity.

Amazement and delight abound in the discovery of how many odd things exist, and have been saved and categorized. Also astonishing is that the room feels brand new--the result of the delicate ways in which the museum conservators have preserved and presented these treasures.

A snapshot of such an exotic room appears in the 17th-century painting "The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet." It looks as though the Walters has reconstructed the room in fine detail except for the inclusion of the live birds and animals that roam about freely in the painting.

The imaginary Flemish merchant would have enjoyed his leisure time in his special study. Filled with books and beautiful objects as well as portraits of important people, the study provides a place in which he would have contemplated his treasures (mechanical clocks, an Egyptian mummified cat), as well as the wide, wide world they represent.

Such lavish riches, however, were not simply displays of the amassment of material souvenirs that underscore one's wealth. What is going on here is evidence of a thought process, of the expanding interest in the natural sciences, and of the wider world filled with animals, plants and minerals that a scientific mind might wish to examine. It is suspected that the imaginary Flemish nobleman not simply admired, but also enjoyed these objects.

Unlike being inside an old castle or a dusty church, the sense of presence of human life--and thought--is so strong in these galleries that one would not be surprised if the original owner of the items walked through.

The imaginary Flemish nobleman might have been most at home admiring the lavish display of painting-covered walls in the two adjacent 17th-century Dutch cabinet rooms.

The Walters Art Museum has created a "museum within a museum," focusing on a specific time and place, where a person of wealth and intelligence would feel at home.

The collection spans 55 centuries and includes new galleries of Renaissance and Baroque art that are part of the "Palace of Wonders." Egyptian treasures, some fabulous jewelry by Tiffany and Lalique, and the Asian art collection are all to be admired.

After returning to the 21st century, it is the experience of being in the Chamber of Wonders, however, that persists.

The early development of treasuries not solely devoted to fine art and precious jewelry, but also to the specimens and collections that one finds on earth, in the field, in caves or in the ocean, affected not only museum history, but also scientific and technological progress.