2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the reopening of the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities. It is considered one of the best-preserved early bourgeois universal collections in Europe and an outstanding example of a historical cabinet of curiosities from the early modern period. The 2025 annual exhibition takes stock and pays tribute to the extraordinary achievement of reconstruction, restoration and museum accessibility in 1995. At the same time, it sees itself as a contemporary guide to the ‘walk-in exhibit Wunderkammer’ in the 21st century.
The exhibition tour begins around 1990 and tells the fascinating story of the rediscovery, rescue and reconstruction of the then almost forgotten collection. In the stairwell of the orphanage, large-format historical photographs impressively document the desolate state of the art and natural history chamber shortly before its restoration – a poignant testimony to cultural decline and, at the same time, the starting point for its rescue.
An exhibition trail with seven themed rooms then guides visitors through key aspects of the collection's history: from the unique classification system used for the objects, the historical collection furniture and presentation forms, to the scientific systematisation of natural history specimens, which was highly modern at the time. Visitors embark on a search for lost and mysterious objects, approach the India cabinet from a polyphonic, postcolonial perspective, follow 18th-century visitors on a journey through time, and take a critical look at the cabinet of curiosities landscape in the 21st century.
