AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

In 2019, curiosity, exploration, and a love for collections drove Martín Batallés and Erika del Pino to collaborate with the Dr. Carlos Torres de la Llosa Natural History Museum and the Secondary Education Central Library in Montevideo, Uruguay. This collaboration began as a way to imagine bridges between conservation, art, and biology, to reflect on the role of fiction in natural science exhibits, and to start asking questions about what are considered materials worth discarding in natural history collections.

Curiosa Naturalia is a visual arts and museological project that involves research, salvage, and conservation of specimens and objects that had been unmanaged in storage spaces. Taxidermy mounts, posters with illustrations, books, fossils, bones, and didactic models of animals and plants were reconditioned to create a series of small installations inside the museum galleries, in an "exhibit within the exhibit" fashion.

The beginning stages of the project were focused on building relationships with museum and library staff to generate trust and excitement about bringing collections back to life after years of neglect. An important aspect of this stage was the learning from those who had worked at the museum for years, who had institutional memory and understanding of the history of decision making and prioritization in the collection. Following that, consultations with experts in topics such as conservation, history of science, and history of natural science exhibits in Montevideo made it possible to begin to properly care for these objects and to give them a new life in a different context.

Conservation work consisted mainly in cleaning the objects and specimens. Some specimens had been so seriously neglected that they could not be recovered. These became ideal specimens to be intervened more invasively, allowing them to continue to serve their exhibit purpose but with a new identity. Conversations with museum authorities allowed for the modification of the intent of the specimens from scientific display to an artistic and evocative one.

The last stage of the project involved mounting several small exhibitions, one within each gallery of the museum and in one room of the adjoining library. On opening day, there was a tour of the space done by an actress that brought the audience into the world of curiosity and nature. After that, the installations were on display for two months, during which we continued to work with museum staff, who by then had become highly engaged with our work and whose enthusiasm for the care of the collections continued to grow. 

Curiosa Naturalia began as a project to recontextualize natural history specimens within the realm of art. Nowadays it has morphed into a collaboration with museum staff to care for collections and to tell the story of their own museum. Since then, other instances of exhibition, talks, and collaboration have stemmed from this initial phase. We like to think this project is far from finished and that the collaborations and relationships we fostered will continue to reshape Curiosa Naturalia through years to come.