Room 2340
European and American Art, 17th–19th century
Art and Value in the Early Modern Collector’s Cabinet

This gallery displays the breadth of art and material culture collected by early modern Europeans, from the most refined objects to the everyday. The installation was organized by students in the Harvard course The Object in the Art Museum (Spring 2024 and Spring 2025).In the 16th and 17th centuries, assembling private collections became increasingly attractive to middle- and upper-class Europeans. The wealthiest amassed artworks and natural objects from across the world to form diverse collections known as Kunstkammers, or collectors’ cabinets. These accumulations dazzled viewers with precious and exotic materials created by the most skilled craftspeople, thus reflecting a collector’s eminence and elegant taste. The Kunstkammer emerged alongside Europe’s violent colonial expansion, and many of the era’s most prized luxury materials, such as silver, mahogany, and ivory, were acquired overseas. The wealthy were not the only collectors. For Europe’s emergent middle class, the desire to collect was matched by a growing art market. Prints, medals, small paintings, and statuettes appealed to the tastes of merchants and burghers, who gathered them together in domestic assemblies that displayed their means and sophistication. All these collections reflected their owners’ personal sensibilities, interests, and desires, acting as material extensions of their identities. But this installation raises larger questions as well. How does the material value of an object relate to its appeal as a work of art? And how do the values of early modern collectors shape the collections of today’s art museums?