Cabinet of Curiosities & Impossibilities, 2023 – 2024

“Cabinet of Curiosities & Impossibilities” originally grew out of a group art exhibition in 2009 at the former headquarters of MOA, a spacious indoor gallery in Englewood, and in 2011 was later interpreted into a semi-permanent and favorite exhibit among patrons for over a decade. In 2022 MOA closed their indoor galleries and moved their headquarters to its recently renovated Marjorie Park location at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre and the artifacts and relics were put into storage. Hanzon will include several of the original objects in the reimagined experience, as well as many new treasures and stories. The cabinet will also serve as a programmable immersive theater experience in the near future, to include actors and audience participation, making the installation truly a one-of-a-kind and further exploring Hanzon and MOA’s extensive work in the immersive art space.

More from the MOA press release 3/23/2023:

“I am honored and excited to reimagine the Cabinet with MOA after all of these years. Being able to take the rich and magical setting of the cabinet, and use it as a reservoir and springboard for an immersive theater work is a dream come true,” said artist Lonnie Hanzon. “It combines all of the art forms that I have been working in for several decades, and brings them into a cohesive offering… a whole world!”

Cabinets of Curiosity emerged as a form from the European traditions of royal keeps and religious reliquaries of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Although the general form of presentation springs from the Baroque period, the style of MOA’s exhibit is Victorian, with objects ranging from antiquity to the present day. Classic Cabinets of Curiosities attempted to be encyclopedic and all-encompassing, but this cabinet will tell stories on amusing oddities and objects of art with a focus on fairy tales and children’s rhymes like Miss Muffet’s Tuffet, Little Red Riding Hood and Alice in Wonderland. Museum patrons will also enjoy the collection of Alice in Wonderland maquettes of life size bronze sculptures located within Marjorie Park, just outside of the cabinet.