Curiosity: Art & the Pleasures of Knowing

Curiosity is an ambiguous passion: the virtuous impulse behind the search for knowledge and at the same time a disreputable desire for novelty and strangeness. This exhibition, curated by Brian Dillon and organised in association with Cabinet magazine, concentrates on contemporary art's return to the intellectual and aesthetic freedom that emerged in seventeenth century art and science. Taking the cabinet of curiosities as its founding motif and through a combination of contemporary art and historical artefacts, Curiosity explores the pleasure that comes from the search for the wondrous and bizarre for their own sake and the contradictory nature of that pleasure.

Tour:
Turner Contemporary, Margate
25 May – 15 September 2013

Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Norwich
Autumn / Winter 2013

Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
Spring 2014

de Appel, Amsterdam
Dates tbc

Image credit:
Albrecht Durer, The Rhinoceros (1515)