"Mark Dion, working in collaboration with students, curators, and museum staff, created the installation Cabinet of Curiosities at the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota. This exhibition, which featured more than seven hundred objects from university collections such as the Veterinary Anatomy Museum, Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies, and the Goldstein Museum of Design, represented the university in miniature, just as the cabinet of wonder of the Renaissance attempted to depict microcosms of the world. From a freeze-dried cow lung to Paul Bunyan's ring to a bowler hat owned by Hubert H. Humphrey to a meteorite - and so much more - Cabinet of Curiosities reveals how the phenomenon of collecting has influenced the acquisition and creation of knowledge within universities and Western Society."--BOOK JACKET