This web site was created to support the gallery intervention "Framing Fields" in the Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. The intervention was part of a Mellon Curatorial Practicum offered in spring 2014. During its 4-month installation, this interactive component gathered feedback from 502 visitors.

 

The intervention reframed the painting "Still Life with Thistles" by Otto van Schrieck (c. 1670) in the context of scientific illustration. To the upper left, I placed a 16th-century illuminated manuscript page showing realistically rendered but oddly scaled birds, insects, snails, and flowers. On the lower left is an early 19th-century botanical illustration.

 

To the right, I placed reproduced pages depicting snakes: on the left is a page from Athanasius Kircher's 1675 text Arca Noë; on the right is a page from Carl Linnaeus' 1735 Systema Naturae. The touchscreen below asks visitors to consider whether they relate more to Kircher's worldview of wondrous connectivity, or to Linnaeus' worldview of systematic classification.

 

The overall responses were evenly split in favor of Kircher versus Linneaus. Amusingly, self-reported Ithacans showed a dramatic inclination for Kircher over Linnaeus. No other group appeared to have such a strong preference.