Wunderkammers and Contested Sacrality in the Walters Art Museum

Abstract

This paper is based on my brief experience as a volunteer at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. It is based on a particular standing exhibit there called the Chamber of Wonders styled after the wunderkammers (‘wonder rooms’) of wealthy Europeans of the Age of Exploration, which feature cultural and natural artifacts obtained from outside of Europe and are rife with racism and exoticism. Tucked away in a corner of the Chamber of Wonders are the remains of an ancient Egyptian child. Research in Goucher College’s Special Collections and Archives connects the college’s founder to the mummy, and the resulting paper dissects the narratives presented by the Walters in the Chamber of Wonders exhibit, how they create a fundamentally contested history and space, and how that contestation influences the museum’s status of cultural and spiritual sacrality according to certain frameworks.