How curious!

Thanks to a colleague for sending me this link to an education project in Aberdeen: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/details-7951.php

It made me think of a really fascinating show I went to see last summer at Kensington Palace, which continues until August 2011. While the palace is being refurbished they have transformed it into an 'Enchanted Palace' with rooms connected to the princesses who have lived there, that visitors wander through on a sort of quest. One of my favourite rooms was for the much maligned Queen Caroline, wife of George II, who was, nonetheless, an interesting collector. The room includes a wonderful 'cabinet of curiosities.'

There is likewise a fascinating small, historic cabinet at Peckover House in Wisbech (National Trust), and a beautiful Renaissance study filled with curiosities in the V&A's new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries. Sir John Soane's Museum, 2 Willow Road (National Trust) and Brighton Pavilion are houses rather than cabinets for the curious. One day I would like to create an exhibition on this theme ...