Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum
These hand-colored engravings are on display at the Getty Center
as part of the "Devices of Wonder" exhibit that runs through
February 3, 2002.
by Anthony Bromberg
Daily Bruin Reporter
It appears museums are finally catching up with the rest of the
world. The J. Paul Getty Museum is at last realizing that people
are a thing of the past. This revolution of phasing out those pesky
carbon-based life forms has begun with the utilization of
automatons to meet patrons. The two most prominent examples are a
life-sized robot clarinetist and another automaton that looks like
a ventriloquist’s dummy, but is in fact a talented trapeze
artist.
“There are some very charming ones,” said Barbara
Maria Stafford, a William B. Ogden Distinguished Service professor
at the University of Chicago, who curated the event.
These automatons, while not really the next step in museum
ushering, are on display at the Getty Museum’s newly opened
exhibit, “Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to
Images on a Screen.” The exhibit brings together wondrous
trinkets, works of art, scientific books and magical artifacts,
dating from the 17th century to the present.
“This exhibit is done entirely from us. It has around 400
objects. It’s a little hard to count sometimes,” said
Thomas Crow, the director of the Getty Research Institute.
 Cornelis Jacobus van Oeckelen’s
robot clarinetist is one of many images from “Devices of
Wonder,” an exhibit at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The exhibit includes a wall covered in the four major groups of
mammalian chromosomes. A crocodile crafted from metal hangs
overhead. There are also old scientific books, a prism, panoramic
paintings and, of course, automatons.
“The ideal is really lifelikeness, in a hyper-reality
way,” Stafford said.
The exhibit is on display in the Getty’s Exhibitions
Plaza. It fills up the rooms with materials from Los Angeles’
own rich culture, including pieces from around 20 local private and
public institutions, according to Frances Terpak, curator of
photographs at the Getty Research Institute.
There will be a number of supplements in addition to the exhibit
itself.
“There’s going to be an evening of diversions that I
think (people) and their families will love to attend,” Crow
said.
Along with that evening, which includes amusements inspired by
“Devices of Wonder,” the related offerings include
“A Trick of Light,” a film by Wim Wenders, and
point-of-view talks with such people as visual artist Michael C.
McMillen.
The Exhibitions Plaza gift shop has also been tailored to
include objects of interest that patrons can take home with them to
keep the wonder alive. A Web site is additionally available through
the Getty’s homepage, which enables anyone to interact with
the items on display in an even more involved and function-oriented
way.
Finally, the people at the Getty have put together a book with
images and information on the “Devices of Wonder”
exhibit, where those who can’t get enough of looking at
automatons like the android clarinetist with a trip to the museum
can get their fill on paper.
The themes of the exhibit are best expounded by its use of
mirrors, and the wunderkammer (cabinet of wonders).
“The objects that are scattered throughout the galleries
reflect what would have been in a wunderkammer,” Terpak said.
“These cabinets are multi-functioning. In a way they prepared
us for today.”
The exhibit makes the connection between today’s
technology, like the Internet, and the wunderkammer. To have a
concentrated space where information and knowledge can be found and
distributed encapsulates the motivations for both. With this as the
key piece, the rest of the exhibit becomes symbolic of
humanity’s thirsting for knowledge and the many experimental
and wondrous forms that have been created in its pursuit.
“It’s like a magician’s box,” Terpak
said of the cabinet.
The use of mirrors in the exhibit runs along these lines.
Mirrors that distort, mirrors that reflect, and even a room
constructed of mirrors, which patrons can walk through if they are
daring enough to remove their shoes, are all included. Like the
wunderkammer and the Internet, the mirror can be used as a
networking device that can coordinate a perception of the world, be
it for scientific or carnival purposes.
“To create this ghostly world of doubles “¦ there are
all these intersecting doubles,” Stafford said.
The wondrous devices are meant to expose the viewer to
society’s continuing ingenious interest in the world of
science and how, through that, the mutability of the world is
exposed as well as everyone’s perception of it. It is meant
to stun visually and entrance with ideas, and even perhaps
reconcile the kid in the next room to the fact that his spot in
band is being taken by that hot new automaton on the block.