Johann Daniel Major (1634–93) and the Science of the Kunstkammer

• In Event: Cabinetization and Compartmentalization in Early Modern Art and Science III

Abstract

In 1674, Johann Daniel Major (1634–93), chair of medicine at the University of Kiel, proclaimed that he was establishing a new discipline, entitled the “Tactica Conclavium...that is, the science (Wissenschaft) of setting up chambers of art and nature.” This involved a survey of global collecting practices in order to determine a state of the art. Major’s conclusions rested on the design of containers and a series of innovative catalogs. Views of Major’s proposals have been split. Some see his plans as evidence of a “Baroque semiotics” of disorder. Others describe his divisions as plunging us “suddenly into the Information technology of the eighteenth century.” This paper will re-evaluate Major’s project through the way he related object, box, cabinet, catalog and a variety of other practices of inscription, both in his prescriptive publications and in the actual practice of his Museum Cimbricum (opened in 1688).

Author

• Vera A. Keller, University of Oregon, Clark Honors College