Description: Vitrines and glass cabinets are familiar apparatuses that have in large part defined modern modes of display and visibility, both within and beyond the museum. The twelve contributions to this volume examine some of the points of origin of the vitrine and the various relations it brokers with sculpture, first in the Wunderkammer and cabinet of curiosities and then in dialog with the development of glazed architecture beginning with Paxton's Crystal Palace (1851). The collection offers close discussions of the role of the vitrine and shop window in the rise of commodity culture and raises key questions about the nature and implications of vitrinous space.
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'... the strengths of the book lie in the essays that speak most closely to the history of collections and to mechanisms of artistic and curatorial control... this is a thought-provoking collection of essays, that considers a variety of curatorial, artistic, economic, temporal and sensory aspects of display.' Journal of the History of Collections